Panama disease (TR4) in Israel: presence confirmed since 2016

While the spread of Panama disease tropical race 4 often causes hysteria among world banana trade players, news of the discovery of a new hot spot (@fruitrop twitter feed) has just gone practically unnoticed. This is doubtless the result of the highly efficient advertising strategy of the Israeli authorities. In the May 2018 bulletin of the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organisation (EPPO), Israel officially and simultaneously announced that it had detected the presence of the disease on its soil in July 2016, and eradicated it in 2018. This staggering effectiveness is something unique worldwide, of which the Australian authorities, world champions in eradicating this disease, must be jealous. Since after years of struggle, they have admitted defeat, now resigning themselves to living with this new sanitary constraint. Israel did not fall short. It has driven TR4 out of its national territory, while it has been present over the border in Jordan since 2013. However, voices are being raised in astonishment at such effectiveness, or in indignation that Israel did not reveal the presence of the disease on its territory earlier, which would have helped prevent its possible spread via land, people, equipment and also planting stock, one of the main producers of which is based in Israel. Conversely, others although always ready to go on about the apocalyptic effects of the spread of such a disease to the very existence of the Cavendish banana, see nothing wrong with that, accepting at face value the twenty reassuring lines of the press release. When questioned over the issue of the eradication, specialists are of course dubious over such a success, given the lack of explanation over the means used, not to mention the natural mistrust of the national authorities which for two years covered up the danger. Technically, eradication is extremely unlikely unless for example the soil has been removed and treated to a significant depth, on the two affected areas: Shfeya region (Carmel coastal plain), and the Lake Galilee region. Furthermore, the fungus may enter a dormancy phase while maintaining its pathogenic capacity for decades after being cut off from its food source, the banana plant. Finally, the vicinity of the Israeli and Jordanian production zones, the catchment areas, the water networks are all potentially permanent vectors of reinfestation (see “Tropical race 4 of Panama disease in the Middle East”, Randy Ploetz et al., Phytoparasitica (2015) 43:283-293).

So there are just two possibilities, either Israel has indeed eradicated the disease and it needs to explain how and provide guarantees of its good faith, or the poor frightened dears, which no longer even organise their conferences in the production zones for fear of introducing and spreading the fungus, put an end to the farce, since it cannot be as frightening as all that... at any rate going on their deafening silence to the Israeli announcement.

Source: CIRAD