Scientists in Tanzania are grappling with how to battle banana wilt, a disease (Banana Xanthomonaswilt (BXW) that has affected the productivity of banana, Kagera Region’s staple food. The most affected areas are Karagwe, Muleba, Misenyi and Kyerwa districts.
Farmers in the region bordering other regions in the country and Rwanda have been affected by the disease.In various interviews with ‘Daily News on Saturday’, local scientists have called on the national political leadership to take a supportive stance on agricultural science and innovation to find ways of arresting the disease before it spreads to banana grown in Kilimanjaro and Mbeya regions.
Senior Research Officer at Chief Research Officer at Maruku Agriculture Research Institute Sayi Bulili said that thousands of hectares were under attack from the disease in the region.
“The fear is that this disease came from Uganda, moving onward to Kagera region. It could go to other banana growing areas in the country like Mbeya region and Kilimanjaro region. This would become a national disaster,” he said.
Another researcher, Leonard Mukandala, at the premiere agricultural research institute at Maruku told this paper that the crop was under threat that threatened the livelihoods of residents, who depended on banana as their staple food and a source of income.
He said the disease had already attacked 80 per cent of households and was still spreading.
In an interview with ‘Daily News on Saturday’, the Kagera region agriculture advisor, Rodgers Kagombola said the disease had spread rapidly to six districts, noting that they had asked farmers to use preventive measures but that since all of them were not curative, it was time that scientists offered a hand to bring in technology that could cure the disaster.
He said the disease had spread in 110 wards of 389 villages and the banana fields of 56,520 households had been infested by the disease by June, 2012.
He said it had infested 23 wards (64 villages out of 92) in Bukoba district, 23 wards (127 villages out of 162) in Muleba district, 40 wards (all 156 villages out of 166) in Karagwe district, three wards (villages out of 72) in Ngara district and 15 wards (35 villages out of 74) in Missenyi District.
A scientist at national research organization (NARO) at Kawanda Dr Geofrey Arinaitwe Geofrey told ‘Daily News on Saturday’, that it was important for the government to legalise biotechnology-based research on the banana and ensure that the technology is made available at little or no cost to Tanzanians and could easily be made available to those even in remote regions.
Dr Arinaitwe and his team at NARO, who are conducting a series of scientific research to overcome similar challenges afflicting the banana growing region of Kagera, said one of their projects underway since 2004 is to develop a banana which is resistant to wilt disease through genetic modification.
The research is being carried out in collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF).
A biofortification project is also in progress, aimed at introducing additional provitamin A to bananas to improve their nutritional content.
Statistics show that Kagera Region has annual yields of about 650,000 tonnes of bananas.
Earlier this year, President Jakaya Kikwete challenged scientists in the country to conduct research to establish the practicality of bio technology to enable the government to act accordingly.
However , a prohibitive legal clause in the 2009 Biosafety Regulations, which holds everyone liable to punitive sanction — from developers, financiers and other partners, down to the last sales outlet, should anything go wrong in the development and utilization of agricultural biotechnology, is still in place.
By ORTON KIISHWEKO, Tanzania Daily News