The Southern Plant Protection Center, under the Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection (Cuc Trong trot va Bao ve thuc vat) of Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, will operate coconut biological control application sites at six locations totaling 12 ha across Dong Thap province, Vinh Long province and Can Tho city in 2026. The plan is to breed about 30,000 parasitoid wasps and about 25,000 earwigs, to be used for farmer training, distribution of source stock, and release at the sites. The ministry's gazette reported it on September 24.
For those sourcing coconut raw materials from Vietnam, it is a clue to how the production area intends to handle pesticides. There are two places to pause when reading: not confusing the names of the pests and their natural enemies, and separating which stage "reducing pesticides" refers to.
Vietnam's quarantine center breeds 30,000 parasitoid wasps and 25,000 earwigs
The 12 ha breaks down as 6 sites x 2 ha
The original writes "six application sites, each at least 2 ha" and "total area 12 ha" in separate paragraphs. Because 6 x 2 = 12, the plan is built with every site at the lower limit of 2 ha. It also adds the reason that the sites are placed apart from one another to curb mutual influence and make monitoring and evaluation easier. The implementation period is from January to December 2026.
The 30,000 are not only for release
This is easy to misread. The uses of the roughly 30,000 and roughly 25,000 are threefold: a portion used in farmer training courses, a portion handed over as source stock for farmers to breed themselves, and a portion released at the application sites. In addition, some is supplied to parts of the region as well. It is not designed so that the full amount is released onto the 12 ha. Even if the full amount were allocated to the 12 ha, the parasitoid wasps would cap at 2,500 per ha and the earwigs at about 2,083 (this figure is our own division, not an announced release density).
The targeted pest differs by province
The sites in Dong Thap and Vinh Long concentrate the release of parasitoid wasps and earwigs on managing sau dau den. Can Tho city places one site that releases parasitoid wasps and one that releases earwigs, and here they target bo canh cung. By calculation, the four sites excluding Can Tho's two fall in Dong Thap and Vinh Long, but the number of sites in each of the two provinces could not be identified from the original. Training is one class of about 30 people each in Dong Thap, Vinh Long, Can Tho and Ca Mau, 120 in total (4 x 30 = 120). Each class is two days, and the goal is for participants to be able to run the breeding and release procedures in their own groves after the course.
The targets are a leaf-beetle-side beetle and a moth larva; don't confuse the two coconut pests
Brontispa longissima scrapes young fronds and halts new leaves
The original's "bo canh cung" translates literally as beetle, and from that alone it could read as either a weevil or a leaf beetle. In a separate article on the same page, Luong Anh Tuan, director of the Central Crop Production and Plant Protection Center, gives the scientific name as Brontispa longissima Gestro. Both larvae and adults damage young fronds, entering the gaps between leaflets and eating the epidermis parallel to the midrib. The leaves curl and wither as if scorched, and new leaves stop emerging.
Opisina arenosella holes up in tunnels of frass and silk
The other, "sau dau den," literally the black-headed caterpillar, is Opisina arenosella Walker, and this one is a moth larva. It eats the epidermis on the underside of the leaf and hides in a tunnel of frass bound with silk. It moves from the lower old leaves to the upper leaves, and even scrapes the husk of the coconut fruit. Groves of old trees are more prone to damage than young trees. The two species differ in both classification and the site of damage, so when raising the subject of control with a production area, you want to align the original's names with the scientific names.
Scientific names and original notations of the five natural-enemy species released
| Original name | Scientific name (as written in the original) | Planned number |
|---|---|---|
| ong ky sinh (parasitoid wasp), 4 species | Tetrastichus brontispae / Asecodes hispinarum / Bracon hebetor / Trichopilus pupivorus (the valid name is Trichospilus) | About 30,000 |
| bo duoi kim (earwig), 1 species | Chelisoches variegatus | About 25,000 |
Which of the four parasitoid-wasp species is on the Brontispa side and which is on the Opisina side is not assigned in this article. Note that the original's Trichopilus pupivorus appears to be a notation of the actual parasitoid wasp Trichospilus pupivorus (Ferriere, 1930; not Braconidae but Eulophidae) with the s dropped. Looking up Trichopilus in GBIF points to a genus of mushrooms in the Entolomataceae, so inquiring to the production area with this spelling as-is will not get through.
Whether "pesticides are reduced" is an aim or a result—check the original's single sentence
How is the program's conclusion worded?
The source article's closing is structured so that combining breeding, site construction, training and field monitoring raises the capacity to manage via biological methods and contributes to reducing the use of plant-protection chemicals, in a direction it aims for—the subject is the program and the predicate is "aims for." Figures measuring the reduction rate or the drop in spraying frequency do not appear in this article. The current stage is the announcement of a plan and procedures, not a report of results.
A separate recommendation says release is preferably once a month
Luong Anh Tuan, director of the Central Crop Production and Plant Protection Center, holds that releasing earwigs and parasitoid wasps is preferably once a month. As biopesticides, a biopesticide with Bacillus thuringiensis as the active ingredient is cited for sau dau den, and a fungal preparation of Metarhizium anisopliae for bo canh cung. Operating natural-enemy release does not end in one go; it runs as a full set including grove cleaning, cutting and disposal of damaged leaves (burning or burying in water), and movement restrictions on seedlings and alternate hosts (areca, banana, etc.). Simplifying biological control into "a decision to stop spraying" diverges from the production area's practice. As for how to read the field trial, it is treated the same as the fertilizer trial in Nghe An asking whether pineapple top-dressing can be cut 25%.
How far has the damage spread—figures for Vinh Long and the south-central region
Breakdown of Vinh Long province's 116 ha by infection rate
According to a compilation by Vinh Long province's Department of Agriculture and Environment, as of July 15, 2025, over 116 ha of coconut in the province was infected with sau dau den. An infection rate under 10% covered 29.39 ha, 10–20% covered 82 ha, and 20–40% covered 4.6 ha. Adding these gives 115.99 ha, slightly under the original's "over 116 ha." The breakdown does not necessarily account for the entire total area. The communes (xa) listed include Ba Tri, An Ngai Trung and Tieu Can.
The relationship between 17,000 ha and 221.8 ha in the south-central region
Change the region and the shape of the figures changes too. The south-central region (Gia Lai, Khanh Hoa, Dak Lak, Quang Ngai) had about 17,000 ha of coconut at the end of 2024, with annual output of about 180,000 tonnes. From early 2025 to early September, about 175 ha was infected with bo canh cung (damage rate 5–10%) and 46.8 ha with sau dau den (same 5–20%, exceeding 40% in places). The total is 221.8 ha, and the area ratio is about 1.3% by our own division. Because the time points of numerator and denominator are a year apart, it is not a figure to treat as an infection rate. The damage does not blanket the whole region but varies grove by grove. This is why the unit of production-area selection becomes "grove and plant" rather than "province." The issue of how the plant handles grade variation overlaps with the issue of what Japanese buyers look at in a plant when the A-grade ratio of durian falls.
What those sourcing coconut raw materials should ask the production area
"Released natural enemies" and "not using pesticides" are different matters
Even in a grove that released parasitoid wasps, if the neighbor sprays chemical pesticides, the natural enemies decrease. In the former Tan Thoi commune of Tien Giang province (now Dong Thap province), the commune people's committee asked residents not to spray chemical pesticides after release. The request was needed because concurrent use could occur. What you want to confirm is not "whether they do biological control" but the timing of release and the records of what was sprayed and how much before and after it. Participant rosters and the natural-enemy rearing rooms held by local agricultural service centers can be seen firsthand in a production-area audit.
The area of organic certification is not proof of control method
In Tan Thoi commune, organic-certified coconut spread to nearly 500 ha by September 2025, carrying US, EU and Japanese certifications. Processing company Thabico showed a plan that year to increase its organic coconut raw-material area in the Mekong Delta to 1,500 ha. Certified area shows that the field meets the requirements, but it does not speak to spraying in adjacent non-certified groves or to how well natural enemies have established. The order is to look at the scope of the field code and the handling of buffer zones together with the certificate.
The primary information to track over the next 12 months, and a move you can make now
Where the year-end monitoring results will appear
| Item | What the original states |
|---|---|
| Implementing body | Southern Plant Protection Center (an institution under the Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection) |
| Sites | 6 locations, 12 ha (each site at least 2 ha) |
| Scope | bo canh cung (Can Tho) / sau dau den (Dong Thap, Vinh Long) *scientific names per a separate article in the same paper |
| Period | January–December 2026 |
| Training and surveys | One class of about 30 people each at 4 locations (120 in total, two days each) / field surveys over 6 months, once a month |
Site operation continues through December 2026, during which technical staff record pest trends, the appearance of natural enemies, and the effect of releases. The material for judgment will emerge after these records are compiled. What to track are the publications of the Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection and follow-up reports in the same ministry's gazette.
Put control records into the transaction terms before ordering
If we narrow to one move you can make now, it is to add a line to coconut raw-material quote requests: "Can you provide, per grove, the control records for the past 12 months (chemicals sprayed, frequency, dates, and dates of natural-enemy release)?" A production area that can provide them has a high probability of having gone through biological-control sites or training. The thickness of demand can also be read from the move in which Vietnamese coconut took the top spot in fresh produce to the US. The more buyers increase, the sooner slots fill, starting from production areas that can provide records.
Sources
- Bao Nong nghiep va Moi truong, "Six coconut biological-control application sites," September 24, 2026
- Same, "Controlling coconut beetles and black-headed caterpillars with natural enemies," September 7, 2025
- Same, "Vinh Long, curbing the spread to organic coconut production areas," July 19, 2025
- Same, "Parasitoid wasps, the guardians of organic coconut groves," November 12, 2025
- List of institutions under Cuc Trong trot va Bao ve thuc vat
