Following on from Colombia in August 2019, the French island of Mayotte, situated in the Indian Ocean off Mozambique, is now the 19th spot officially contaminated by TR4 (tropical race 4) fusarium wilt. The presence of this soil fungus has been confirmed on cooking and dessert bananas in the south-west of the island. According to the sanitary authorities, the disease was detected on the varieties Baraboufaka (ABB, bluggoe sub-group) and Kissoukari (AAB, Silk sub-group), sampled from two plots side by side in Poroani, in south-west Mayotte. Surveys are in progress to determine its distribution on the rest of the island. The Mayotte archipelago primarily produces Cavendish dessert bananas, highly sensitive to the disease. This is of course very bad news for this French Department, where banana production is a staple of the dietary balance of the local population. It also poses a really serious threat to the Indian Ocean as a whole, given the intensity of circulation of goods and people across the zone, more or less well controlled and controllable. The Comoros, Reunion and Madagascar could be the next victims of this extremely aggressive fungus.
To find out more:
FruiTrop no.266, November 2019. World banana market. TR4: the day after tomorrow (https://www.fruitrop.com/en/Articles-by-subject/Economic-analyses/2019/World-banana-market)
FruiTrop no.265, September 2019. Tropical race 4 (TR4) fusarium wilt: what we really know about this disease and its impacts (https://www.fruitrop.com/en/Articles-by-subject/Agronomy/2019/Tropical-race-4-TR4-fusarium-wilt)
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