Julian

I was driving around Pearl City and I saw a mat of banana infected with bunchy top. About 5-6 bananas all about 2-3 feet in height and severely bunched up and stunted. The amazing thing is that not more than 15 yards away, there was another mat of banana that looked amazingly healthy. There was one bunch that had to be nearly 4 feet long and just loaded with fruit. I looked around the neighborhood and in eye distance alone there were about 10 different mats, and they all looked okay. There was even a healthy dwarf Chinese mat about 50 yards away and they supposed to be very susceptible to bbtv. I wonder why the other's are not infected?

raygrogan

It will be a good experiment to see how fast it spreads. Another similar BBTV matt I'm watching is at the base of Tantalus - in that little park along Makiki Hts Dr. One matt all shrunken, at least one nearby that looks OK from the road so far.

A neighbor 2 houses away from me used to have a bad BBTV matt and in those days I got about 10 hits a year. Once we killed the BBTV plants I dropped down to about 1 hit a year.

TommyMacLuckie

Perhaps they've adapted?

Julian

Thank you for sharing Ray. I going to try and take some pictures. It's right on the outside of Pearl City Urban Garden. I would think that those infected plants have to have been there for a while, because there were several of them in the mat. I wonder if they were already infected when they were first planted.

Gabe15

There are a few things to consider here:
-There are always plants that escape infection
-The symptoms can take quite a while to manifest symptoms when infected
-Looking at a snapshot in time of disease presence in an area gives you very little information about it's spread, almost by definition, you have to observe it over a period of time, for BBTV, you would need to observe an area for 2-3 years at least to get a good idea of how it is spreading in the area.

What you have seen is not very unusual, and if that infected mat remains there (and others that are likely in the area that you did not see), then it is highly likely you would start to see more infected plants if you continually went by there for the next few years.

__________________
Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

dkf85281

what's the right thing to do now? is knocking on the guys door to inform him about BBTV and to cut them down inappropriate?

Julian

I wanted to. It's not residential, it's actually right under the freeway, in what looks like a lot leased by a construction company. It's in a ghetto type of area with a sign that says no trespassing... I drove by there twice to check out the small little farms back there. Both times there were workers hanging out after work. I actually felt intimidated just looking in there direction. Dudes were rugged looking and staring my car down. We'll see.

raygrogan

Just ran in to BBTV fairly close and made a note to leave in their mail box:


Your banana plants have BBTV and should be killed

Hi neighbor,

You probably already know that “something is wrong” with your banana plants. They have a permanent terminal disease caused by Banana Bunchy Top Virus (BBTV).


(Photo from UH Banana Bunchy Top Disease in Hawaii: Symptoms, Diagnosis and Management
or google BBTV symptoms
or bananas.org also has some info)







The virus is spread by flying insects (aphids) and by cutting tools like machetes. There is no cure other than to kill the plant so that it stops spreading it to others. The normal method to kill is to first spray soapy water on the plants to kill any aphids that might be on it, then treat the plant with “Roundup” (glyphosate) to kill it. The plants will take about a month to die and can be left in place to gradually rot (or dug up, trash will take them if 3' or shorter pieces). Once the diseased trees are killed you can replant (UH has young trees for a few bucks, grown in greenhouses free of the disease) and maybe be lucky to not catch it again. You can still grow bananas in Hawaii, you just have to recognize and kill each plant that gets the disease (and watch the neighborhood plants, too).


If you need help I will be glad to show up with tools and do it for free as long as you tell me exactly what you want done (like kill all, or only kill the ones that clearly have the disease and try to save the rest) and I can do it at my convenience.

(then my phone number, etc.)

Yug

Notify the 'Ag' department. Also, tell them that Ko'olau Farmers near HCC has some ornamental bananas infected also, and possibly the one in Kaneohe, too.

Julian

Did you see these at Koolau?

Yug

The one by HCC, yes. I mentioned it to the older guy running the cash register, but he said the owner wouldn't get rid of them. For all I know, the guy at the cash register may have been the owner. If you go into the fenced in area, they are on the left side partway back. The one at Kaneohe has a few that may have been neglected or virused - hard to tell. They had a new shipment in that of course looked good, but the older ones were the bad looking ones. I went to the 'Ag' webiste for complaints about those things, but it was a holiday, and I needed to call someone about it.

Gabe15

Just a note about this info, BBTV cannot be spread by tools, this is outdated information which is still hanging around, but important to know the truth. The only way BBTV is spread between plants is by the banana aphid.

__________________
Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Yug

That rumor may have started because of the orchid fanatics that believe that the Cymbidium mosaic virus spreads via tools so they will sterilize them or torch them to prevent the spread of CM. So if you do that for 'chids, you must need to do that for every other type of virus.

raygrogan

wow! Tools not a worry? That is a load off of me - sterilizing machetes all the time, and I had quit trimming leaves, etc. One of my banana buddies does not bother with all that and has had no more (or less) trouble than me, = probably the random flying aphid. In the experiments that proved dirty tools OK, they hacked sick plants, then healthy plants, no effects? What about innoculating plants to see if they resist BBTV, what do they use, some probe that is the same size as the aphid?

Gabe15

For some viruses, inoculations can be done by grinding up an infected leaf and mashing it into a healthy plant, this does not work with BBTV. For cutting tests, it is quite simple, cut an infected plant with a tool, then cut a non-infected plants, protect them from aphids, and see what happens.

For inoculations with BBTV, you take aphids from a plant with the virus and move them to plants without the virus, and then they will transmit the virus.

__________________
Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.