Geographic Information System Used for Assessing the Activity of the Red Palm Weevil Rhynchophorus Ferrugineus (Olivier) in the Date Palm Oasis of Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia, the red palm weevil (RPW) Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) is managed through the use of a pheromone trap based area-wide Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programme, covering nearly 3.0 million date palms. In this study, Geographic Information System (GIS) based techniques were used to study the spatial spread of RPW in two RPW-IPM areas of Al-Hassa viz. Al-Khadoud (297 ha) and Sodah (168 ha) with high and low weevil activity, respectively. The position of RPW pheromone traps in both Al-Khadoud (140 traps) and Sodah (84 traps) were logged using the Trimble Geographic Positioning System (GPS), to determine the East Longitude and North Latitude of each pheromone trap. The Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) co- ordinates for each trap were also recorded. The weevil captures in pheromone traps, and the infestation reports for 2008 in the above operational areas were reported, Based on the reports, the territorial spread of the weevils and spatial distribution of infestations due to RPW on date palm, was depicted for both Al-Khadoud and Sodah at five levels. Further, regression analysis was carried out to ascertain the relationship between annual weevil captures (Y) in pheromone traps and infestation (X) reports for 2008, on a 10 ha scale, in Al-Khadoud and Sodah, through linear regression. Based on high R² values (> 0.70), we selected Y = 121.0+4.515X as the model that could quantify the above pest-infestation relationship in Al-Hassa. This study can serve as a basis for incorporating GIS technology for improving the on going RPW manage- ment strategy, in Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia.