Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Unfortunately, my new Goldfinger bunch has mysterious spots and some fingers are turning yellow already despite only about half way filled out. The first hand of this bunch appeared on September 10 this year and should not be filled out or ripen until at least January. Those fingers that are yellowing are splitting have very hard skin with soft interior and are not edible. The spots on the banana fingers seem to be a caused by fungus or nutritional deficiency. Here are some pictures.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Do you see any streaking on any of the leaves? Almost like a variegation pattern? Do you see any dark brown spots on the petioles as well, or if you cut a petiole open are there discolored spots inside? I have some reference photos I can post later, but it's possible you are experiencing BSV (Banana streak virus) expression, but some more photos would be needed to confirm.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

If it is BSV is there a remedy?

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

If it is BSV the link can tel you more
Banana streak disease

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Here are some pictures of the leaves. I do not notice any streaking on the leaves. The leaves appear to be a healthy green color.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

I think I do have banana streak virus and it may have spread to all my banana plants already. My SH 3640 next to the Goldfinger has a bunch with twisted fingers and some leaves have mild symptoms of streaking. Another Namwa nearby has leaf streaking for some time. I did not find any mealy bugs though. I will post more pictures in this thread soon.]

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

This is a picture of the SH 3640 bunch with twisted fingers.




Namwah banana with streaking





SH 3640 leaf with streaking

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

I dug up the Goldfinger corm today and found some insect larvae tunneled in the corm. The damage was not severe though and the corm looked healthy.





This is a picture of black spots on the inside of the Goldfinger pup P stem.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

That Pstem damage looks like pics I have seen of Panama disease which is known to be in south Florida...

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

I hope for you that is not the Panama disease .
Here is a link https://www.plantmanagementnetwork.o.../bananapanama/

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

The picture with the P stem dark spots is from a pup near the Goldfinger parent plant with bunch. This pup stopped growing when the bunch first appeared but the leaves remained normal green color. This pup suffered no die back or collapse like Panama disease. I have removed the corm and the roots appeared very healthy and very numerous.


I am going to inspect the banana plant tissue to determine the problem. It appears from a visual inspection the Goldfinger plant has banana streak virus and the some of the other banana plants have cucumber mosaic virus infection. I cannot be sure though until the virus tests are finished.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Virus Test??? Are there DIY kits for this?

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

I am sorry I was not clear in my last post with reference to the testing. I plan to collect samples and then send them off to be tested.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Another point about the discoloration is it only appeared in the upper part of the P stem. The stem near ground level had no discoloration.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

good luck

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Is Goldfinger susceptible to Panama disease?

Today while cutting the peduncle I found some orange spots. Here is a picture.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

'Goldfinger' is resistant to all races of Panama Disease, so it's highly unlikely it is that, and there would be other symptoms too.

To me it looks like Banana streak disease, in this case caused by Banana streak Goldfinger virus (BSGFV). There are a number of other streak virus species which affect other bananas. The challenge with managing these viruses is that they are integrated into the banana genome, and are expressed as a gene basically, so there is no way to rid the plants of them, only destroy the plants and start again with non-actively expressing material. As such to detect they are active a serological based assay (such as ELSIA) is needed as opposed to DNA based as the DNA based assays (such as PCR) will detect the integrated sequence regardless of if the plant is actively infected or not. I'm not sure where you can send samples for testing, Agdia which is good standard for testing in the US does not yet seem to offer services for Banana streak virus species. Perhaps you can contact the extension service at UF: Florida Extension Plant Diagnostic Clinic | Tropical Research and Education Center, UF, IFAS


They tend to activate under stress conditions, but there remains a lot unknown about these viruses. Symptom expression can be highly variable from light streaking on the leaves and nothing else to severe bunch stunting and total yield loss. Occasionally symptoms may disappear and the plants can resume normal growth, but as far as know there is no surefire way to force that to happen.

I wouldn't be so quick to determine it has spread to your other plants just yet, the streaking to me looks different than the classic symptoms, and sometimes infected plants suffer no real damaging symptoms anyway.

Here are some of my photos of BSGFV symptoms on a 'Goldfinger' plant. The fruit never grew larger. https://goo.gl/photos/oaaLtdnGPHft4jMo9

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Is this the same "Goldfinger" cultivar with the messy rachis that you've been having problems with for years?

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

Yes This plant has very rarely or never displayed leaf streaks. The symptoms were spit leaf sheaths near the bottom and bunches with small fingers and numerous large black spots. The P stem has also collapsed twice before the fingers could possibly fill out.

The replacement plant might be FHIA 3


I would also like to plant Gran Nain.

Re: Goldfinger bunch has spots and seems to ripening far too soon
 

I have received the results from CMV and BSV tests on Namwah and SH3640.

Namwah tested negative for Cucumber Mosaic Virus and negative for Banana Steak Virus.

SH3640 tested negative for Cucumber Mosaic Virus and negative for Banana Streak Virus.

The Goldfinger plant was removed and destroyed and was not tested.

There is no virus problem so there must be some nutritional deficiency problem for the Namwah.