Rat Control in Oil Palm Plantations : A Review

Rats have been established as the key vertebrate pest in the oil palm plantations in Malaysia since the early 70s. The common oil palm rat, Rattus tiomanicus, is the most well researched and understood rodent pest in this tropical crop, and techniques to control are well established. And yet today rats still pose as serious a problem as before, causing significant oil losses if no proper control measures are taken. While rodenticides will remain as the most important rodent pest management tool in oil palm plantations for the foreseeable future, recent rodent integrated pest management (IPM) programme using barn owl has achieved some successes. Much remains to be done to optimise the use of rodenticides, and biological control agent in the IPM. Unfortunately, research and development of rodent pest management in oil palm plantation has, practically become non-existent now due to the lack of interest and funding. This could prove to be a serious challenge to the industry when new problem associated with rodent pest arises. Keywords: Rat control, oil losses, rodenticides, resistance, integrated pest management