Remedy to fight banana disease

By Maore Ithula and Roselyne obala

Crop scientists announced a successful transfer of green pepper genes to banana plants to fight wilt banana disease in East and Central Africa.

The researchers at International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) observed the discovery would eradicate the disease, which is also referred to as the Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW).

Dr Leena Tripathi, a plant biotechnologist, says pepper genes will help fight Banana Xanthomonas Wilt disease. [PHOTO: Courtesy]

The disease costs banana farmers about half a billion dollars worth of damage annually across East and Central Africa.

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According to reports by International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, Kenya produces more than a million tonnes of banana annually and imports more than twice as much from Uganda and Tanzania. This caters for about 20 per cent of the country’s food needs.

The transformed bananas that have been infused with one of the two proteins from the green pepper have shown strong resistance to BXW in the laboratory and in screen houses.

Tripathi says: "Our team will soon begin confined field trials in Uganda, which is Africa’s leading producer of bananas."

The magical genes in the green pepper are proteins that include plant ferredoxin-like amphipathic protein and the hypersensitive response-assisting protein.

Says she: "The genes work by rapidly killing cells that come into contact with the disease-causing bacteria, blocking it from spreading further."