by Jims Vincent T. Capuno
The Philippines has maintained its position as among the world’s top banana producers. It is the only Southeast Asian country that made it to the top five major suppliers of banana in the world.
After Ecuador , the Philippines is the world’s second-biggest banana exporter; it supplies 95 percent of Japan ’s banana import. The three other top-five banana exporters are all from South America: Costa Rica , Colombia , and Guatemala .
In 2010, the country exported almost US$320 million worth of banana products, according to figures of the National Statistics Office. “As trade commodity, banana is as old as history,” commented Carlos R. Munda, Jr., former editor-in-chief of The Mover, the official publication of the Davao-based Anflo Group of Companies.
In popular culture and commerce, “banana” usually refers to soft, sweet “dessert” bananas that are eaten when ripe. The bananas from a group of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called plantains, and are generally eaten cooked unlike ripe bananas. The word “banana” is derived from the Arabic word “finger.”
The early Filipinos bartered banana for cereals, livestock, and ornamentals. But it was not until in the late 1960s that Philippine banana made it to the world market. “This is because it was only in the 1950s and 1960s that bananas were planted commercially on Philippine soil,” Munda wrote.
DOLE, a subsidiary of Castle and Cooke, an American corporation, brought the first commercial banana seeds – the cavendish variety – into the country. On September 2, 1966, some 176,000 seeds or root parts from Central America were unloaded from the M/V Benny Skou at the Calumpang wharf in General Santos City.
Munda noted: “From then on, local entrepreneurs saw the commercial viability of the plant, namely the Floirendos, Tuazons, Ayalas, Soriano-Dizons and Dalisays, to name a few. They became the pioneers of the banana industry. It was mainly through their efforts that the Herculean task of transforming the swamps of Davao del Norte into the most productive plantations in the country was achieved.”
Today, Davao del Norte hosts many of the 33 major banana plantations and small grower farms. The province accounts for more than half of the 79,000 hectares of banana areas in Mindanao, according to Stephen Antig, the executive director of Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA).
The province is touted to be the country’s “banana belt.” So, it was not surprising that the first confirmed attack of the Panama disease this year (specifically in September) happened in Davao del Norte, particularly in the town of Santo Tomas .
“There are reports of infestation in other areas already, besides Santo Tomas,” Ramon Meloria, chief of the Plant Quarantine Office of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), told Business Mirror. “But these reports were yet to be validated by our technicians.”
The disease took its name from a country in Central America where it wiped out the banana farms planted to the Gros Mischel, the first variety of exported bananas. “Disaster struck in the mid-1950s when Panama disease turned on the Gros Michel banana,” wrote Victoriano Guiam in an article which appeared in BAR Digest. “Within a few years, wholesale destruction was seen in plantations in Central America and Africa with 50,000 hectares lost in Honduras alone. This drove the banana business to near bankruptcy and precipitated the move to the relatively less delectable, but resistant, cavendish banana.”
Also known as Fusarium wilt, Panama disease is caused by a fungal pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc). A soil-borne disease, it remains in an affected area for decades.
The Foc fungus is efficiently spread through water and irrigation systems, according to Dr. Agustin Molina, coordinator of the Banana Asia and Pacific Network. The Panama disease reached Australia in 2006 due to the floods from cyclone Larry; it spread the disease to healthy banana plants. The Australian banana industry used to face bright prospects but is now facing collapse.
Infection of the plant, Dr. Molina explained, is through injured roots of the banana plant. The fungus then invades the xylem vessels appearing as a reddish-brown discoloration and advances into the corm. Eventually the fungus affects the whole stem and above ground symptoms appear.
