Bananageddon:
Millions face hunger as deadly fungus decimates global banana crop
Disease
spreads from Asia to Africa and may already have jumped to crucial
plantations in Latin America
4
April, 2014
Scientists
have warned that the world’s banana crop, worth £26 billion and a
crucial part of the diet of more than 400 million people, is facing
“disaster” from virulent diseases immune to pesticides or other
forms of control.
Alarm
at the most potent threat – a fungus known as Panama disease
tropical race 4 (TR4) – has risen dramatically after it was
announced in recent weeks that it has jumped from South-east Asia,
where it has already devastated export crops, to Mozambique and
Jordan.
A
United Nations agency told The Independent that the spread of TR4
represents an “expanded threat to global banana production”.
Experts said there is a risk that the fungus, for which there is
currently no effective treatment, has also already made the leap to
the world’s most important banana growing areas in Latin America,
where the disease threatens to destroy vast plantations of the
Cavendish variety. The variety accounts for 95 per cent of the
bananas shipped to export markets including the United Kingdom, in a
trade worth £5.4bn.
The
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will warn in the coming
days that the presence of TR4 in the Middle East and Africa means
“virtually all export banana plantations” are vulnerable unless
its spread can be stopped and new resistant strains developed.
In
a briefing document obtained by The Independent, the FAO warns: “In
view of the challenges associated with control of the disease and the
risk posed to the global banana supply, it is evident that a
concerted effort is required from industry, research institutions,
government and international organisations to prevent spread of the
disease.”
Scientists
are particularly concerned about the impact of TR4 across the
developing world, where an estimated 410 million people rely on the
fruit for up to a third of their daily calories.
According
to one estimate, TR4 could destroy up to 85 per cent of the world’s
banana crop by volume.
Since
it emerged in the 1950s as the replacement for another banana variety
ravaged by an earlier form of Panama disease, Cavendish has helped
make bananas the most valuable fruit crop in the world, dominated by
large multinational growing companies such as Fyffes, Chiquita and
Dole.
But
the crop – and many other banana varieties – have no defence
against TR4, which can live for 30 years or more in the soil and
reduces the core of the banana plant to a blackened mush.
It
can wipe out plantations within two or three years and despite
measures to try to prevent its spread from the original outbreak in
Indonesia, it is now on the move. Such is the virulence of soil-based
fungus, it can be spread in water droplets or tiny amounts of earth
on machinery or shoes.
Professor
Rony Swennen, a leading banana expert based at Leuven University in
Belgium, said: “If [TR4] is in Latin America, it is going to be a
disaster, whatever the multinationals do. Teams of workers move
across different countries. The risk is it is going to spread like a
bush fire.”
Another
senior scientist, who asked not to be named because of his links with
the banana industry, said: “There are good grounds for believing
that TR4 is already in Latin America.”
The
Panama fungus is just one of several diseases which also threaten
banana production, in particular among smallholders and subsistence
farmers.
Black
sigatoka, another fungus to have spread from Asia, has decimated
production in parts of the Caribbean since it arrived in the 1990s,
reducing exports by 90 to 100 per cent in five countries.
Researchers
say they are struggling to secure funding to discover new banana
varieties or develop disease-resistant GM strains.
Professor
Randy Ploetz, of the University of Florida, said: “The Jordan and
Mozambique TR4 outbreaks are alarming but have helped increase
awareness about this problem.”
But
the large producers insist the problem can be controlled.
Dublin-based Fyffes, which last month announced a merger with
America’s Chiquita to form the world’s largest banana company,
said: “While we continue to monitor the situation, as of yet we do
not foresee any serious impact for UK banana supplies.”
A
lab holding the World Banana Collection at the University of Leuven A
lab holding the World Banana Collection at the University of Leuven
The
Cavendish: A top banana under threat
When
the world banana industry found itself in crisis in the 1950s, it was
saved by a fruit cultivated in Derbyshire and named after a duke.
The
Cavendish banana was grown by the gardener and architect Joseph
Paxton while he was working for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth
House.
Paxton
managed to acquire one of two banana plants sent to England in around
1830 and began growing the fruit in the stately home’s glasshouses.
He named his banana Musa cavendishii after the 6th Duke of
Devonshire, William Cavendish.
The
Chatsworth bananas were later sent to Samoa and the Canary Islands,
providing forerunners for the variety which emerged in the 1950s to
succeed the Gros Michel or Big Mike – the banana sub-species wiped
out by an early version of Panama disease between 1903 and 1960.
Cavendish
is now the world’s single most successful – and valuable –
banana, accounting for 47 per cent of all cultivated bananas and
nearly the entire export trade, worth £5.3 billion.
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