IITA to help farmers combat new banana disease

DODOMA: THE International Institute of Tropical Agricultural (IITA) is currently implementing a special project to combat banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) outbreak in the country.

Christened ‘Regional emergency response plan to control BBTD Outbreak in East Africa, the over 300,000 US dollar worth project is designed to develop key technology to assist farmers to control and eliminate the virus – based disease.

An IITA researcher, Rudolf Shirima said at the ongoing 31st annual Farmers’ Week Exhibition (Nane-Nane) at Nzuguni in Dodoma, IITA has developed digital artificial intelligence facilities to help farmers to detect the disease.

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“IITA is working closely with the ministry of agriculture, the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) and the Tanzania Plant Health and Pesticides Authority (TPHPA) to disseminate to the farmers key agronomic knowledge and skills to fight against the disease,” he said.

Banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) is caused by a virus known as banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) and that it has so far caused a big damage to banana plantations across the country.

“The virus is transmitted by an insect vector, the banana aphid (Pentalonia nigronervosa), or through the use of infected planting material,” he expressed.

To curtail the disease, he said through the project, He added that the vision is to contain further spread of the virus in order to allow banana farmers to heighten production and productivity.

“We’re using a number of different approaches to assist the farmers to battle against the disease, apart from use of the artificial intelligence facilities,” he said.

He said the reliable solution to curtail the disease was a total uproot of the infected banana plants in order to limit further spread.

The disease causes crop loss between 90 and 100pc in just one season after infection, which means, farmers will lose all income they used to generate from the sales of fruits in the market, according to him.

The other method against the disease that the project is training the farmers, he said was the use of special pesticides to kill the disease’s vector virus, banana aphid (Pentalonia nigronervosa).

“We’re also training the banana farmers on how to develop and spread the infected banana plants sopa forms as the way to kill the virus,” he added.

In further efforts, he said the institute was also working to support production of safe and quality banana seeds in order to overcome the disease.

“Among the ways for the spread of this disease is dissemination and use of contaminated (affected) banana seeds,” he observed. BBTD was reported for the first time in Tanzania in 2023 in Buhigwe District, Kigoma Region.

As of October 2023, the disease has spread in many regions, including Dar es Salaam, Coastal, Morogoro, Mbeya, Dodoma, Kilimanjaro and Mwanza.