Welcome to Happy New Year 2011 and Second Decade of Millennium

It gives me great pleasure to say Hi and wish all my readers “A very happy and prosperous New Year 2011”.  We have completed first decade and entering the second of the millennium with a lot of hope and optimism.  In the past one year lots of new developments have taken place and one of the most important is the report on the occurrence of R. ferrugineus from California State of USA.  Though some people expressed doubts about the identification, the species has been positively identified as R. ferrugineus by the experts in USDA and University of California.  This happened when I was attending the Potential Invasive Pests Workshop in October in Miami organized by Florida University.   So red palm weevil is no more a potential invasive pest to USA!   Before this meeting, I had the opportunity in last May to interact with researchers and managers of red palm weevil at a meeting of EU experts in Valencia, Spain.  This pest is causing severe damage to Canary Island palms in the countries in Europe and various strategies are being tried to contain the pest and prevent its spread.

We now know that more concerted efforts are needed by the governmental agencies as well as the private organizations and the growers to solve this problem.  On our part the Chair of Date Palm Research (formerly Red Palm Weevil Research Chair), King Saud University, has embarked on a new strategic research plan and is cooperating with other institutes, universities and Ministries.  We have to bring together all the knowledge and expertise available from any corner of the world to tackle this vexed problem.  Due to my preoccupation with regular duties I have not been able to blog regularly; however, I continued to reply directly to many readers who have a problem or two with the control of red palm weevil.  I am addressing the minor glitz in posting of messages and soon it will be over and all postings will be visible from the new year under appropriate subheadings.  I hope to continue this blog more regularly for the benefit of all my readers.  I also request other friends and readers to write and share more information about the red palm weevil to enrich the knowledge base of others. I once again wish you all a Fantastic and Rewarding New Year.