Banana flower thrips and red rust thrips
Young fingers get tiny black specks that grow into rough corky scab, or reddish brown rust where fingers touch, and badly hit fruit splits open.
Crops it attacks
Where the damage shows
When to act
At shooting, open the bracts of 10 new bunches per block and look for thrips with a hand lens. Check the young fingers again a week later. Flower thrips do their damage in the first 2 weeks after the bunch shows, so protect every bunch from shooting. Rust thrips show later where fingers touch.
What to spray
- SpinosadIRAC 5ShopeeLazada
- AbamectinIRAC 6ShopeeLazada
- SpirotetramatIRAC 23ShopeeLazada
- ChlorfenapyrIRAC 13ShopeeLazada
- ThiamethoxamIRAC 4AShopeeLazada
- Bifenthrin plus buprofezinIRAC 3A plus 16ShopeeLazada
- ClothianidinIRAC 4AShopeeLazada
- Sabadilla alkaloidsIRAC UNShopeeLazada
- CypermethrinIRAC 3AShopeeLazada
- MethomylIRAC 1AShopeeLazada
- Lambda cyhalothrin plus thiamethoxamIRAC 3A plus 4AShopeeLazada
- DiazinonIRAC 1BShopeeLazada
Active ingredients only, never brands. The IRAC group tells how it works: switch to a different group next time, so the pest does not learn to survive it. Spray only when the damage is worth the cost, and only with products registered with the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority for your crop. Follow the label. The Shopee and Lazada links only show who sells something with that active ingredient, not a recommendation of any seller or product.
Resistance: Thrips soon learn to survive a group used bunch after bunch, and flower thrips in Asia resist pyrethroids, organophosphates and even spinosad in places. Rotate spinosad (5), abamectin (6), chlorfenapyr (13) and spirotetramat (23), and never repeat one group on back to back bunch cycles.
On labels for it, but not advised
- Deltamethrin: Banned on banana.
How to prevent it
- Bag each bunch soon after it shoots. A plain bag alone already cuts scab and rust.
- Cut off the male bud and brush away the dry bracts and dead flowers on the fingers early. Thrips hide and breed in them.
- Keep flowering weeds down in the plantation. Flower thrips breed on weed flowers too.
- Desucker and deleaf on time so bunches dry fast and any spray reaches the young hands.
- Plant clean suckers or tissue cultured plantlets with no soil on them. Rust thrips pupate in the soil and travel with it.
- Spray, if you must, only the young bunch, not the whole plant, so natural enemies survive.
Natural enemies and biological help
- Minute pirate bugs, predatory thrips, lacewings and spiders eat thrips. Whole plant broad sprays kill them.
- Beauveria bassiana or Metarhizium on young bunches can cut thrips numbers in humid weather.
Not sure it is this one?
Many pests look alike. Send a photo to Anee, the smart farm technician in anee.io. She reads it with your crop, its age and the weather, and tells you what it most likely is and what to do first. In Tagalog or English.