Last Sunday I had the opportunity to have a look and roaming around in some jungle at
Lintang Organic Valley, Sik Kedah. Really its a jungle!
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| Excited - Have to get through them to reach The Lintang Organic Valley |
But I am surprise that in the middle of the jungle, there is a paddy field. All the paddy there was organically planted with the SRI (System of Rice Intensification) method. Worry not! There are more people there and all of them are interested with the SRI Rice. On that day, from the SRI method, the total rice yield is 7.16 tonnes/hectare for MR263 rice variety. From my point of view, thus is such a good technique and the total rice yields increased compared to the conventional method. Plus it is ORGANIC! Such a good stuff.
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| 1) The participants - most of them are students and researcher from the universities. 2) Won the gold medal for Malaysian Invention and Design Society. 3) Paddy sample for MR263 variety is about to be harvested. 4) Participants are counting the rice yield. |
The objective of my visit is actually to know and learn what is ubi gadong or scientifically known as Dioscorea hispida. At first, I thought it was as same as tapioca plant but it was as closed to the yam family. Ubi gadong has the potential to act as an organic bane towards the parasitoids (such as Scirpophaga incertulasdan and Scirpophaga innotata) and the golden apple snail. The active compounds are toxic alkaloids known as dioscorine and dioscorine N-oxide that retards the development and insecticidal activity (act as depressants in the nervous system to the insect). The tuber is cut, put in a blender and then soaked in water for 24 hours. The soaked water were used to spray on the paddy plant. Meanwhile, there is another active component known as saponin that can be used to kill the golden apple snail. But in a large doses, saponin can kill any type of fish in the paddy field. I think further research is needed towards this matter before the tuber is use for reducing the golden apple snail invasion.
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| Ubi Gadong |
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| Ubi gadong vines. |
Besides ubi gadong, I was introduced to
akar seruntun or also known as patawali, brotowali or batang wali. Scientifically it is known as
Tinospora krispa (miers) or
tinosprora tuberculata. They said that the vine of this plant is so bitter and can be used as repellent for parasitoids. The preparation of the vine is as same as the ubi gadong. The soaked liquid is sprayed on the plant. Both of the vine and the tuber can be mixed together too.
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| Akar Seruntun |
The findings are much more interesting. I wonder, why should we go for chemical pesticides etc while there are abundance of natural sources that are much more safer for the environment. Let's think again!
