PLANT pathologists, crop researchers and plantation managers are agog over the reported discovery of a way to check the dreaded Panama disease (fusarium wilt) currently wreaking havoc in cavendish banana plantations in Davao and close to 10 other provinces in Mindanao.
Robert T. Del Fierro, president of Delfi Agriventures Corporation, a company engaged in the distribution of organic and environment- friendly agri-chemical products, said a plant scientist on his team has developed a technology proven to be effective for both curing and preventing Panama disease.
This is done by using a new protocol in the treatment of plants and soil in banana plantations that are fusarium wilt-infested and by applying Agrimin, a clay mineral extract developed by the Japan National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, and Tierra Green a microbial inoculant.
Tests made in a number of banana plantations, del Fierro said, reduced infection by more or less 50 percent in just two months of treatment. Impressed by the findings, a banana firm has ordered a plantation-wide application of the commercially available organic product together with the newly developed technology, he said.
He explained that Agrimin is a plant nutrient with disease cure and prevention benefits tested in banana, mango, pineapple, sugarcane, palm oil, rice, corn and pomelo.
“Agrimin has been found doubly effective if integrated with Tierra Green which provides beneficial microorganisms that continuously established in the soil hosting the casual pathogen,” del Fierro claimed.
The management of a palm plantation in Agusan has also invited the scientist to conduct trials of the protocol on ganoderma disease infesting oil palm.
The group is also willing to demonstrate the technology to top executives of the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) and officials of banana companies now being ravaged by fusarium wilt.
Del Fierro’s team and some banana firm representatives are slated to meet with Department of Agriculture in Region headed by regional director Oscar Parawan on Monday to discuss the new technology and how it could be availed of by small banana plantations with the help of the DA.
Earlier, Parawan organized a task force that will work on implementation of quarantine measures and information drive.
The task force is a composite team from national and local government as well as from the private sector particularly PBGEA and MBGEA (Mindanao Banana Growers and Exporters Association), he said.
The Panama disease is usually spread through eight different ways –by root to root contact, farm workers, stray animals, soil pests, plant parasite nematodes, improperly disinfected farm tools and equipment and infected soil movement caused by flood, shoes, boots.
The dreaded banana disease is controlled through early detection and immediate eradication, farm sanitation and injected site quarantine, injection of glyphosate (herbicide) of infected plant or by killing of infected plants, chopping and burning of all infected plant tissues, cleaning and squaring off or fallowing of infected area, strict enforcement of tool and farm equipment disinfection, installation of foot and wheel baths in all entry and exit ways of infected farms and plantations and planting of disease-free tissue culture seedlings and planting materials.
Del Fierro bared that his company’s team of researchers considered the six fundamental principles of disease management in conducting trials on how to control the Panama disease in various controled infected areas. They are the principles of exclusion, eradication, protection, resistance, therapy and avoidance.
He said the protocol experimented by the team did way with the practice of chopping or removal of slight or early stage/ symptom infected plants and followers. There was likewise no burning of infected plants until the infected plant die and dried. The team did not inject Glyphosate but instead applied cure and prevention treatments with Agrimin and Tierra Green. They also conducted disease prevention and maintenance spray once a month. The team also fence the quarantined area.
Del Fierro said that as a result of not chopping down plants during the early stage of infection, 12 to 18 percent of the plants were saved for production. There was also reduction of disinfectant solution application. Since no the new treatment does not use synthetic pesticide to eradicate the disease, workers involved in treating the disease are safe from exposure to toxic materials.
“The system has also been found to have higher efficiency in treating infected plants,” he said, adding that new system of eradicating the disease is definitely cheaper than the conventional practices.
“The trials also proved that in the areas subjected to the new technology, no disease recurred,” del Fierro said. [AMA]
