“Most farmers follow blanket fertilizer recommendations which can be very inefficient and therefore expensive. Farmers should apply only as much nutrient as needed for a realistic yield increase for their specific locality,” he says. He adds that another consideration is distance to the markets. “Bananas are perishable and costly to transport because of their bulk. One needs to be close to the market to fetch a really good price,” he says. “Uganda’s production zones are too far from markets, some more than 150 kilometers away. This leads to low banana prices at the farm gate. Fertilizer use in such cases becomes risky and, therefore, may not be recommended.” Fertilizers also help replace lost soil nutrients. For example, the study estimated that more than 1.5 million tons of potassium are removed from where the bananas are grown and transported to Kampala where most of the markets are. These nutrients are mined by farmers, but not immediately replaced. Over time, this could diminish the soil’s ability to profitably sustain banana production. To guide East African highland banana farmers, we, with our partners, have developed several site-specific recommendations for the application of fertilizer based on the region and the distance to markets. We are also encouraging the private and public sectors to address fertilizer packaging to suit the specific needs of farmers.
Genes from sweet pepper fortify African banana against devastating wilt disease In a major breakthrough in 2010, we successfully transferred genes from green pepper to bananas, conferring on the popular fruit the means to resist one of the most devastating diseases of bananas in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) costs banana farmers about half a billion dollars in damages every year across East and Central Africa. The leaves of affected crops turn yellow and then wilt, and the fruit ripens unevenly and before its time. Eventually the entire plant withers and rots. Leena Tripathi, lead scientist of the study and author of the paper, says there is still a long way to go before the transgenic bananas find their way onto farmers’ fields, but she called the breakthrough “a significant step in the fight against the deadly banana disease.”
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