Food supplies in several African countries are under threat because two diseases are attacking bananas, according to BBC online Thursday.
Crops are being damaged from Angola through to Uganda – including many areas where bananas are a staple food. Experts are urging farmers to use pesticides or change to a resistant variety of banana where possible.
Scientists have been meeting in Tanzania to decide how to tackle the diseases. The scientists, from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), said that “drastic and expensive control measures” were needed.
They recommended “completely excavating entire banana fields and treating them with pesticides, or burning the plants”.
The two diseases – bunchy top viral disease and bacterial wilt – are both spread by insects and very few varieties of banana have resistance to them. While bunchy top stunts the growth of plants by causing leaves to sprout from the top, bacterial wilt kills off plants and makes their fruit inedible (uspiselige).
