Supplies of bananas is under threat from plagues of bugs and fungal infections. Researchers are worried this could lead to a worldwide disaster if their spread isn’t halted. Costa Rico – which generates half a billion dollars from its banana industry – has already declared a national emergency.
Banana crops have been hit by two separate plagues of mealybug and scale insects.
To compound the problem, the fungal disease Fusarium oxysporum f. sp.cubense – sometimes called Panama wilt – has morphed into a new strain and spread from Asia and Australia, where it has decimated crops for over two decades, to Jordan and Mozambique.
A Joint statement on has issued by the Mozambique Department of Agriculture, Matanuska, IITA, Stellenbosch University and Bioversity International,
Dr Serafina Mangana, Head of Mozambique’s national plant protection organization said that “the outbreak is limited to a few fields on the farm. All sites where the disease was found have now been isolated, the affected plants destroyed, and appropriate phytosanitary measures have been implemented to prevent the disease from spreading”.
After starting my garden maintenance and landscaping business in 1984 and running it for 21 years I decided I needed a change of direction (probably a mid life crisis, no seriously! :-0) Together with my family, wife Donna, Son Henry and Daughter Fleur (not forgetting Hector the Black Labrador) I moved to France in search of an old farmhouse to renovate. In the interim period whilst waiting for the contract to go through I started writing a blog. Initially just to keep a diary for family and friends to keep up with our progress if they wished but then it occurred to me that there isn’t a real time watcher of the landscape industry in the UK. I didn’t want to waste my experience and experiences so I decided I could put all of this Juice to good use so I started Landscape Juice.
Source: Landscape Juice – World Banana Crops Under Threat from Bugs and Disease – Philip Voice
