Kenya-based international conference to discuss banana issues, October 5-9

Banana and plantain growers, scientists, entrepreneurs and policy makers from around the world will gather in the coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa early next month for a conference seeking to make banana the next cash crop.

Organizers said on September 23 that the October 5-9 conference is expected to launch an ambitious and unprecedented 10-year effort aimed at transforming what is now largely a subsistence crop, into a major cash earner for millions of Africa's rural poor.

The conference, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the Belgium Directorate General for Development and Cooperation (DGDC) and other public and private organizations, will concentrate on banana markets and trade, production and technical innovation, with the goal of producing a tangible 10-year strategy to realize the potential of this crucial crop to alleviate poverty and generate wealth. Conference speakers will offer, among other things.

"The Banana and Plantain in Africa Conference represents a first comprehensive attempt to create stronger global and local market links in the region for a crop valued at 1.7 billion U.S. dollars in East Africa alone," the statement said.

The five-day meeting has been organized by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in partnership with Bioversity International, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the International Society for Horticultural Science(ISHS) and the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI).

According to the statement from IITA, researchers will present results from a wide range of groundbreaking studies that point to numerous opportunities in fields, labs and markets for substantially boosting the production and earning power of a crop that currently feeds more than 100 million Africans but whose potential has yet to be tapped.

"The speakers will offer among others concrete evidence that concerted efforts to improve market access for the small farmers who grow the bulk of Africa's bananas and plantains could double or even triple their earnings," it said.

A blueprint for boosting incomes in marginal areas through improved banana processing will be also the discussed.

In Africa, diverse products are derived from the banana crop, including beer, wine, juice, sauce, mats, handbags, envelopes, postcards, flour, soap and breakfast cereals.

Yet, as a result of low investment in processing and market development, most income from bananas still comes mainly from the sale of perishable fruit for immediate consumption.

The statement said new insights into the fight against numerous diseases and pests, enhancing nutritional quality and raising production through new banana hybrids and crop management techniques will be discussed at the Mombasa meeting.

"This will include a discussion of the role of biotechnology in the overall push to improve banana production in Africa," it said.

A recent report from an African agriculture research consortium found that Uganda's reliance on homegrown bananas for food and income was a key reason why during the recent global farm commodity crisis, the food price index rose only 10 percent in Uganda, compared to the global average of 56 percent.

International Banana Conference to be held in Kenya in October 2008

The International Banana Conference 2008 will be held from 5-9 October in Mombasa, Kenya.

Interest for the conference has been massive, with more than 500 people having expressed an intention to participate, a sign of the food security and economic importance of banana. However, local and regional banana production, often carried out in smallholder farms, are badly managed and inadequately marketed. But lucrative small-scale enterprises are now sprouting in many places in Africa, producing in vitro-propagated plantlets that can be rapidly disseminated in large quantities, leading to increased farm productivity and allowing farmers better access to markets.

The conference will be attended by both the Vice-President of the European Commission of Trade and the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The conference will have three major themes: markets and trade, production, and innovation systems. The role of research and the importance of public-private sector partnerships will also be highlighted.

The conference will focus on banana and plantain research across Africa, including lessons learnt and the way forward. Fostering international partnerships is a major objective of the conference, with particular emphasis tn establishing the role of research in promoting future commercial activities and trade in banana, plantain and ensete. There is an urgent need to target basic and applied research that connects to existing and emerging markets. This conference will be the first pan-African meeting to link research to markets in an African context.

Results of the conference will lead to the development of a 10-year strategy document that will shape and change the way bananas are produced and marketed in Africa, linking state of the art research to new markets and stimulating trade. In the long-term, the impact will be to change commercial banana production from a donor aid-supported system to one which is sustained by an invigorated private sector that actively seeks technological interventions.

The conference is being organized in partnership with IITA,Bioversity International, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa(FARA), the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI).

The contact person for the conference is Dr. Thomas Dubois, who can be contacted on email address t.dubois@cgiar.org

More information is available at www.banana2008.com

New research effort to focus on biotechnological banana pest resistance

A tiny pest threatening the staple diet of millions in Africa could soon be eradicated in a project announced today, bringing together plant experts from the UK and Uganda.

Professor Howard Atkinson and Dr Peter Urwin from the University of Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences have been awarded GBP500,000 through the GBP7 million Sustainable Agriculture Research for International Development (SARID) scheme launched by the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The project is one of 12 funded under the scheme, all of which involve unique partnerships between UK scientists and researchers from institutions in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

Plantain and other varieties of cooking banana provide 30 per cent of the daily calorific intake of Ugandans and many of Africa's other poorest populations. But up to half of the plantain harvest is lost through nematode worms feeding on and damaging their roots. The Leeds researchers will work with colleagues from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Uganda to find a solution to the problem.

The partnership will use the latest biotechnology techniques to develop pest resistance in plantains, which can then be made available to growers throughout Africa. A major part of the 3-year project is ensuring that the new resistant plantains can be produced across Africa - where growing conditions can vary enormously.

However, like the sweet dessert bananas we are more familiar with, plantains are sterile plants that produce no seeds, limiting the use of conventional plant breeding to build resistance to the pest over successive generations.

Professor Atkinson says: 'It makes the job tougher. Plantains are re-planted using offshoots. This means that every plant is a genetically identical clone of the original - and a pest that affects plantains is capable of affecting every single plant.'

'There are four or five types of problematic worm that live in the soil and we're looking to find a way to control them in a 'one size fits all' approach. Our Ugandan partners have developed a technology to add genes into plantains and this, combined with our leading knowledge of nematodes, makes us hopeful that we can target this technique to inhibit the unique digestive process of the worms and stop their destruction, without affecting surrounding plants or other animals in the soil.'

Science Centric

Banana pest control conference to be held in South Africa in September

A global conference that will bring together the world's leading experts on protecting bananas from pests and diseases will take place in South Africa from 10 to 14 September 2007.

The conference is the first to be organized under a new agreement between the International Society for Horticultural Science and Pro Musa, a broad coalition of all who are interested in the improvement of banana and plantain.


Commercial growers around the globe have suffered devastating losses in their plantations due to diseases such as fusarium wilt and black leaf streak, and pests such as nematodes. Many are now on a "pesticide treadmill", faced with crippling bills for pesticides, which are becoming less and less effective in protecting the crop, while increasingly attracting the disapproval of environmentalists and public health workers alike.

For small-scale farmers in the developing world, who depend on bananas and plantains for their livelihoods, the effect of the ever-increasing pressure of pests and disease can be even more severe, threatening their basic food security.

Plant breeders have so far generally failed to deliver on their initial promise of creating resistant varieties that are widely acceptable to producers and consumers. Novel approaches to address the threat of newly emerging and well-established pests and diseases, based on managing the diversity available within the crop and the diversity of associated species within the cropping system, are now being seriously considered. These will be at the forefront of the conference.

"We no longer expect simple solutions from a single discipline," said Richard Markham, a director at Bioversity International and on the conference programme as a keynote speaker. "After more than 20 years of research we now realize that we have to combine the best varieties that breeders can offer us with intelligent management, based on agro-ecological principles, but it's still not easy to put these basic principles of integration into practice. This conference will help."

Bioversity International

Plantain production in Ghana on the rise

Ghana's Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture ,Mr. Clement Eledi, has reported that the national production of plantain increased from 1.1 million metric tonnes to 3.6 million metric tonnes per annum between 1992 and 2005, an increase of about 230 per cent.

Eledi attributed the improvement to work of Ghanaian researchers since the inception of the national agricultural research programme. He said Ghana had since 2001 remained the largest producer of plantain in West and Central Africa, with the current per capita consumption standing at 101.8 kg. He said plantain contributes about 13.1 per cent of the agricultural gross domestic product. It ranks high in food preference, with 90 per cent consumed locally.

Eledi said only a small percentage of the total production was exported to Europe, United Kingdom, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, though the demand was high in these markets. He attributed the low exportation percentage to the fact that apart from that consumed locally, quite a lot of the plantain rotted on the farm. "If there were strong linkages among stakeholders and the value chain was intact, this situation would not occur", he said.

Dr. Irene Egyir, a researcher and a lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon who presented the findings of a study, said agricultural policies had not adequately maintained the country's competitive position in the world markets for a number of agricultural commodities, which included plantain.

The study identified major constraints such as low farm gate price, high tax rates, high cost of transport, seasonal market price instability, irregular visits by researchers, breaches of informal contracts between traders and farmers, poor handling of produce, lack of processing machines and lack of product standardisation. The study recommended innovations in the areas of policy, capacity building, of actors, business finance, strengthening of horizontal and vertical linkages as well as market infrastructure.

Professor Emmanuel Owusu-Bennoah, Director-General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said researchers generated knowledge "and the knowledge does not get to the people on the ground and it is necessary to bring the key players together to modernise agriculture."

Accra Mail

Banana wilt threatens livelihoods in Uganda

Banana bacterial wilt disease (BBWD) is threatening the livelihoods of many farmers in Uganda. According to Peter Ssetenda, programme assistant at the Centre for Integrated Development (CIDev) in Kayunga, BBWD is known to have begun in Mukono district in September 2001. It has spread to 19 districts and continues to spread.

Mbarara District Agriculture Officer Charles Byaruhanga suspects that trucks which used to bring vanilla from Mukono to Bushenyi could have brought the disease. "We think the disease could have been transmitted through the tyres of the lorries which would leave infected mud in other areas. Also some farmers used to load vanilla and infected bananas together with soil which would be planted in Bushenyi," said Byaruhanga. He says BBWD arrived in Mbarara two years ago and up to now the disease has no local name because of its newness to the area's farmers, although they have taken measures to control it. "We have not had new outbreaks since we started preventive methods," he says.

According to Byaruhanga, BBWD is a soil-borne disease and gains entry in plant bodies through roots and openings on plants caused by nematodes. It is mostly serious in poorly drained soils and is spread through infected suckers. It initially appears in older leaves and causes premature fruit to start ripening. Soon after, the male bud withers and rots before it drops off.

Moses Kibumba, the BBWD district coordinator in Kayunga says, "The leaves and bananas tend to turn yellow before rotting within a short time. When peeling banana from an infected plant you find that they are brownish inside or at times black in colour. The brown and black colours are a true indication of the disease. And when you cut the banana stem or peel the bananas, the sap turns a creamish colour after 5 to 15 minutes."

Byaruhanga says, "Many farmers have been following the different ways of controlling the disease while others are either reluctant or too old to follow the steps."

Many farmers can now identify the disease in its early stages. David Bogere, the vice chairman of Biharwe banana wilt task force in Mbarara,said one way of spreading the disease has been through using tools on both infected and healthy plants. "We simply rinse tools used on an infected plant in a dilute disinfectant such as bleach or alcohol, or heat them up in fire," he says. One cup of bleach can be mixed in five cups of water and this helps to kill the nematodes, thus controlling the spread to other plants.

Mbarara is one of the biggest producers of matooke in the country. It exports to Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi and eastern DR Congo and within, it sells to Soroti, Mbale and Kampala where the demand is very high. Matooke is a major cash and food crop in Uganda.

Ssetenda explains the difficulty faced in implementing control measures: "We lacked cooperation from farmers because many refused to cut down their entire plantation, thinking that the disease was just like any other banana disease." A recurrent problem faced was shortage of extension workers to train farmers on control measures.

Farmers are also advised to avoid moving things like leaves, stems or even bananas from places where the disease has been identified. Cutting off the male bud early using a long dry forked stick also helps and use of lusolobyo, a tool where a sickle or knife is attached to a stick used to cut leaves of the bud is discouraged. "The control methods are simple though some farmers tend to neglect them," says Kibumba.

The disease has affected the social-cultural aspects of the residents in some areas, with some abandoning banana growing altogether because of the heavy losses.

The Monitor

Hot water as an antidote to nematodes

Resource-poor farmers in the humid forest zone of West and Central Africa suffer heavy losses in plantain cultivation from numerous pests and diseases. Nematodes are amongst the most damaging pests, attacking the plant roots and causing many plants to fail before an edible bunch of fruit is produced.

Farmers in Cameroon and Nigeria, however, have now the means to prevent these pests from damaging their crop by applying hot water to treat plantain and banana suckers to kill nematodes and rid their farms of nematodes, bacterial, and fungal diseases. Those who apply the hot water treatment have not only controlled the nematodes and root-rot diseases but have
doubled their yields.

In Ekiti State, southwestern Nigeria, many farmers say that half of their plantain do not produce any fruit bunches before the roots are destroyed. The hot water treatment is bringing back the lost glory of plantain in the area. There is a huge market for plantain chips in Nigeria, and banana and plantain are major export crops in Cameroon.

One particular species of nematode that lives only in the root system of plantain and banana is causing serious yield loss in several countries of sub-Saharan Africa. It is very likely that a farmer who digs out a sucker for a new field will carry the nematodes on the surface and in the roots of that sucker to a new field. “Nematodes are spreading rapidly and they need the plantain or the banana as a host”, says Dr. Stefan Hauser, an agronomist with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), who introduced the hot water treatment technology to farmers in Cameroon.

Nematodes can be controlled by placing the suckers in water at 52 °C degrees for 20 minutes. But peasant farmers have no equipment to ensure the exact temperature. IITA’s scientists confirm that research demonstrates that the technology is effective, but outside research stations, it is difficult to apply.

Infested suckers are placed in boiling water (100 °C) for just 30 seconds. The heat shock kills all pests and diseases on and just under the surface sucker but does not kill the sucker. To boil water no special stove, container, or thermometer is needed to control the temperature. The only important thing is to not leave the sucker for too long in the boiling water. Lacking timers, resourceful just clap their hands 30 times to mark thirty seconds.

Nematodes could be eliminated by using broad spectrum nematicides of very high toxicity, which kill practically any organism. “They are expensive, they are pollutants, and they are systemic, the plants taking them up and distributing them inside through tissue. One is never absolutely sure if there are no residues being retained in the edible matter”, says Hauser.

The boiling water technology is simple to use, and cost-effective. “It may be a good idea to have this as a standard treatment against practically everything that is attached to the outer surface of the corm because it kills bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and weevils that pose a health problem,” says Hauser.

IITA