I am now located in the Văn Yên District in the Yên Bái province of Vietnam. This is where I will conduct all of my field research for my thesis. I have 8 research sites in total 4 of which are cassava mono-crops and the other 4 are cassava cowpea inter-crops. The sites are located on varying degrees of slopes on the hill. I collect 75 leaves from each site and bring them back to the lab to be viewed under the microscope. When viewing under the microscope I count the number of both red spider mites and associated predatory mites and record them in an excel file.
I was not prepared for the number of mites on the leaves and it took some time to get used to counting them as the tend to move about on the leaves but I am improving every time. By the end of my sampling periods I will have collected and viewed 3600-4200 leaves under the microscope (that’s a lot of mites) so I am hoping the speed that I collect the leaves at will improve with time.