Things are going well! We have our first two plants flowering after only 7 months in the ground. This recent photo was taken at about 8 months after planting. It is gaining a lot of attention on our campus, and we already started to expand it, and will be adding even more soon as well.
The first ISHS-ProMusa symposium ended with Richard Markham, then chair of the ISHS Section on Banana and Plantain, reminding participants “of our limited success over the past 20 years in providing workable solutions to the major crop protection problems of farmers”. We all know what these are: leaf spot diseases, Fusarium wilt, bacterial wilts, viruses, nematodes and weevils. This fourth symposium, hosted by Embrapa, similarly provided sobering accounts of the challenges scientists still face in addressing these problems. And rightly so. We should not underestimate the scale of the task at hand. But symposia also play a non-negligible role in lifting our spirits by reminding us that the steady progress of science is also punctuated by the occasional leap.
A while ago I had written about the banana collection at the student farm program I help run here at the University of Hawaii. We have been working very hard and have some new updates I'd like to share.
The Banana Asia-Pacific network (BAPNET) is the first network to have chosen who will represent them on the ProMusa Steering Committee. In January, the BAPNET Steering Committee unanimously elected Gus Molina, the Asia-Pacific regional coordinator for Bioversity International’s Commodities for Livelihoods programme. He had been acting as the network’s representative since their admission to the Steering Committee last May.
Until now, Africa has been a relatively minor player in world banana trade: Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana accounted for around 4% of the trade in 2007 (FAOSTAT export data). Both Angola and Mozambique will join the nations that export their fruit to Europe, with major joint venture investments by the US-based Chiquita Brands. Dole, the world's biggest fruit company, is also reported to be looking for partners in Angola, having recently invested in a large plantation in Ghana through its part-ownership of Compagnie Fruitière. Cameroon regularly states that it intends to increase its exports.
Stephan Weise and Jim Lorenzen have been elected as the new chair and vice-chair of the ISHS banana and plantain section. At the next ISHS congress, in August 2010, the newly elected chair and vice-chair will take over from Richard Markham and Victor Galán Saucó, who had been appointed as interim chairpersons when the section was created in 2006.
Hill bananas (AAB, two ecotypes Virupakshi and Sirumalai) are grown at a height of 2000 to 5000 feet with well distributed annual rainfall of 1250-1500 mm in the lower Palaini, Sirumalai and Kolli hills. Hill bananas, unique to the state of Tamil Nadu, are known for their special flavour and long shelf life. Hill bananas are perennial in nature, cultivated along with coffee and pepper also as a multitier system. Hill bananas are highly susceptible to Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV). BBTV has been the sole cause for reduction in Hill banana cultivation from 18,000 ha in 1970s to a mere 2,000 ha at present.
A new project, based on a recommendation made at the latest ISHS/ProMusa Symposium, will help predict the impact of the dreaded Fusarium strain on banana production in Africa.
To reinforce its role in guiding research priorities, ensuring better linkages between growers and scientists, as well as facilitating the dissemination and uptake of results and knowledge, the ProMusa Steering Committee has created a seat for each of the banana regional R&D networks, representing stakeholders from banana-producing regions: BAPNET in Asia and the Pacific, BARNESA in eastern and southern Africa and MUSALAC in Latin America and the Caribbean. The MUSACO network for West and Central Africa is being restructured as an innovation platform on plantains managed by WECARD and CARBAP, with technical backstopping from Bioversity International, IITA, CIRAD and FAO.
Members of the ProMusa network have joined forces to take on the challenge posed by banana streak viruses (BSV). DNA sequences of these badnaviruses are integrated in the B genome donated by the wild species Musa balbisiana. The ability of some of the sequences to form infective particles has led to restrictions on the distribution and use of B-genome-rich cultivars. Certain institutions have even stopped using cultivars containing the B genome in their breeding schemes. But if these cultivars are anything like their balbisiana ancestor, they could be more tolerant to drought than cultivars derived only from Musa acuminata, which donated the A genome, and as such play an important role in safeguarding future banana production against the effects of climate change.
Greetings everyone! I thought I'd share here a modified version of an article I've written for a local newsletter about the student farm I help to run.
One of the most basic roles of a permanent World Banana Forum that is focused on a transition to a sustainable banana economy could be to rethink the whole question of price.