Let’s not go bananas over new crop disease

I REFER to Mike Mande’s “Diseases threaten to wipe out bananas in sub Saharan Africa” (The EastAfrican, August 31-September 6).

Mr Mande seems to assume that all bananas in Africa are genetically uniform and will all be susceptible to new diseases. That is not the case,
Uganda alone has at least 70 genetically distinct varieties of the crop. It is unlikely that all of these will perish by the banana bunchy top virus.

Also, the bacterial wilt can be contained by good management practices. As matooke is a cash crop in Western Uganda, farmers will be lining up to learn more about it. They have an incentive to do so.

About the $200 million that is lost through diseases: Far more gets lost every year by ripe matooke rotting in the plantations, because nobody comes to buy them. Nobody tries to preserve them and sell this excess crop when it becomes scarce (Christmas, rainy season, etc). Let’s not spread scare stories.

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