Re: Panama Disease TR4
Results from these and other trials indicate that the FHIA clones are generally very vigorous and produce high yields under a wide range of environmental and edaphic conditions. Importantly, they resist pathogenically and geographically diverse populations of M. fijiensis, as well as two other major problems, Panama disease, (fusarium wilt) and nematodes. Unfortunately, since they do not yet meet the high standards of the export trades, they have only been adopted for local consumption in East Africa, tropical America and the Caribbean.
In the future, products of the breeding programs will play increasingly important roles in subsistence agriculture. Whether new hybrids are used eventually to replace the Cavendish cultivars that are used by the export trades, however, remains to be seen. The very substantial infrastructure that characterizes export production is focused on producing only these cultivars. Converting these operations to the production and handling of another type of banana would be an expensive proposition. Moreover, the currently available hybrids do not meet the very high standards for fruit quality and post-harvest shelf life that are demanded by the trades. Yet, as fungicides continue to lose their effectiveness against black Sigatoka, and as the practice of fungicidal disease control becomes more expensive and less appealing to consumers in the importing countries, the trades may eventually be forced into making the difficult transition away from the Cavendish clones.
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