A test may prevent bananas from becoming extinct
many farmers across the world will now stop going bananas. Researchers have developed a method to quickly assess the susceptibility of the banana plants to Panama disease -- the fungal infection endangering the staple food of hundreds of millions of people. The feat could make it easier to select resistant strains of banana for wide-scale planting.
In recent years, the disease has had a major impact on yields in Africa, Asia and Australia. It is now spreading to Latin America and the Caribbean -- the hub of commercial production. Fusarium oxysporum, the disease pathogen, strikes the plant roots and hence it is impossible to control it with chemicals. Experts apprehend the disease would ensure that banana lovers find shelves empty when they go to buy their weekly bunch (see: 'Banana shake', Down To Earth, February 28, 2003).
The current method of detecting banana strains susceptible to the disease is time-consuming and laborious. It involves infecting soil with the fungus, waiting for the plant to grow, and then cutting the plant at the base of the stem to evaluate the extent of internal damage. "This destroys the plant, making continued study of the same plant impossible," says Barbarita Companioni of the Bioplant Centre, University of Ciego de Avila, Cuba.
Along with her colleagues, Companioni has developed the new test, which takes just a few days to get results, and can be conducted on a small number of leaves. The fungus is grown in the laboratory and then applied to tiny perforations of banana leaves. After 48 hours, lesions of around 18 millimetres in length can be seen in the leaves of susceptible plants, while leaves from resistant plants have lesions of less than seven millimetres (Biotechnology Letters, Vol 26, No 3, February 2004).
The Cuban Research Institute for Tropical Food Crops is already using the test in its programme aimed at developing banana and plantain hybrids that are resistant to Panama and other diseases.
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