The big news for banana growers around the world is Fusarium Race 4 (FOC) is a conquerable disease! Over the past year, experiments were run on banana plants infected with FOC. A banana farm In Davao North, Philippines where FOC is endemic was selected as the experimental field. This farm of 1500 hectares, had a history of losing hundreds of hectares a year to FOC.
The big news for banana growers around the world is Fusarium Race 4 (FOC) is a conquerable disease! Over the past year, experiments were run on banana plants infected with FOC. A banana farm In Davao North, Philippines where FOC is endemic was selected as the experimental field. This farm of 1500 hectares, had a history of losing hundreds of hectares a year to FOC.
Since FOC would exhibit the typical symptoms only when the plant is stressed and at flowering, the experimental plots were selected when a mat was found that exhibited the symptoms. The first twelve mats that came down with the disease were selected as the experimental plots.
As soon as one mat showed the symptoms, every other surrounding mats to the infected mat, a total of 7 mats, that had the potential to spread the disease were vaccinated. The non-vaccinated mats served as controls. This vaccine was developed and tested by Agro-K Philippines for over three years (2016-2019) using immune therapy vaccines to resist the fusarium infections. Dr. Harry Rajamannan, Agro-K, has 25 years experience in the research and development to replace the use of pesticides to treat banana diseases with immune therapy and nutrients.
See full article at Agropages
