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Crop Disease: In Africa Where Bananas Are a Staple, Two Diseases Are Destroying Plants (In the N.Y. Times, Sep. 1 09)

Two diseases are attacking banana crops across central Africa, putting about 30 million people at risk in regions where it is a staple.

At a meeting in Tanzania last week on the crisis, agricultural experts urged farmers to use pesticides or switch to resistant varieties, according to reports from the meeting by BBC News and Reuters.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the world’s leading network of agricultural research centers, recommended “excavating entire banana fields and treating them with pesticides, or burning the plants.”

Such measures are hard for poor farmers to afford and can devastate ecosystems. Bananas sprout from “mother plants,” and killing them ruins a crop. Huge banana trees are costly to spray, and they hold soil in place.

One disease, banana bunchy top virus, stunts and kills plants. Spread by aphids and infected suckers from older plants, it can be impossible to eradicate from a crop once it is established. It has been found in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The other, bacterial wilt, causes fruit to ripen prematurely, which can wipe out up to 90 percent of a crop. It survives in soil and plant debris and is spread by insects and contaminated hoes.

The wilt has been found in eastern Congo, Ethiopia, western Kenya, Rwanda, northern Tanzania and Uganda.
In central Uganda, many farmers have abandoned bananas and switched to cassava and corn, which are less nutritious.