The excellent organization of the mission enabled us to meet knowledgeable people and visit research facilities, be it in the field or in the laboratory. As most of the documents on the Red Palm Weevil (RPW) were in Arabic, it was difficult for us to assess the work carried out on that subject over the last ten years or so. We were only able to procure some quite general information from our hosts. Several national organizations under the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture are involved in protecting, improving and deriving optimum benefit from the palm groves. This fact-finding mission enabled us to gain an impression of the RPW problem, confirm its seriousness in SA, then assess Saudi research potential, and the approach and initiative taken in relation to the RPW problem. Our mission showed us that the situation is not under control and infestation is continuing. To date, control methods have consisted in detecting attacks through a monitoring network of pheromone traps, locating infested palms visually, treating with insecticides, felling palms when infestation is severe, and mass elimination of insects using pheromone traps in places where no infested palms are found. Research is being conducted into pest biology and improving the trapping system, but few publications in English were available to us. It seemed to us that RPW control has currently reached deadlock 13 years after the first control measures were launched, and our Saudi contacts are seeking new solutions. We felt that the preventive and curative policy applied was the right one, all in all, but difficult to apply on a regional scale and requiring farmers to be cooperative. Optimum use is not made of agronomic methods. We therefore estimate that tools must be improved, using a more effective co-attractant in association with the pheromone, that the trapping strategy will have to be revised once we have more knowledge on the pest's behaviour (how trees are colonized, movement mechanisms, etc.).