Our national fruit may be mango but the healthiest fruit in the country is banana. Bananas are relatively cheap and can instantly fill a stomach. Bananas are the most consumed fruit in the world, but now this nutritious-tasty food is facing an increasing risk of ‘Panama Disease’. A disease known as ‘Panama Disease’ spreads rapidly on banana plants and destroys them completely. The disease has been showing up on banana plants for the past two decades but in recent years it has been spreading like an epidemic and destroying banana fields. Many scientists even say that the ‘Cavendish banana’, the type of banana that is currently available all over the world, will become extinct in the coming years. As time goes on, more scientists are voicing such warnings. What is the real picture of global banana production and the risks it faces?
As the ‘Panama Disease’ is spreading, it is worrying our country the most, because our country produces the largest amount of bananas in the world. The ‘Panama Disease’ is now being compared to the ‘Covid-19’ of bananas because of its rapid spread. ‘Panama disease’ is also known as ‘fusarium wilt’ and in technical terms ‘tropical race 4’. In this disease, a kind of fungus is produced in the plant and gradually it makes the whole plant dead. In the first two decades, the disease spread slowly in banana shoots, but in the last decade it has accelerated and now it has spread from Asia to Australia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
Bananas from Latin America find their way into supermarkets in developed countries, so they are now being discussed more in the media. Scientists around the world are working day and night to find a solution to this disease and are thinking of genetically modifying it or working hard for a vaccine. One of the reasons for this fear is that earlier in 1950, a whole variety of banana was on the verge of being eradicated from the world due to a similar disease. At that time, a fungal disease affecting banana plants originated in Asia and later spread to Central America. One of the reasons why banana disease is spreading rapidly from one end of the world to the other is that mostly one species of banana is produced worldwide.
For example, before 1950, why was the banana produced as it was known everywhere as ‘Big Mike’? There are many reasons for this, such as these bananas grow very quickly, they are produced in large quantities, they are equally tasty, and they do not spoil quickly, these are the many advantages of this species of banana. This species of banana was so successful that its plants spread everywhere and became the most planted in terms of market. Thus, banana plants are largely genetically identical. From the point of view of the market, the crop of this banana species is more remunerative, but from the point of view of the epidemic, it is a source of great disaster. Due to this, concern is being expressed about the existence of bananas all over the world. After 1950, the ‘Big Mike’ banana species was replaced by the ‘Cavendish banana’.
Compared to 1950, technology has advanced and the world of research has also developed significantly, so many researchers are currently experimenting to eradicate the ‘Panama Disease’. However, no concrete solution has appeared so far and that is why an article was published in the prestigious magazine like ‘Time’ in the year 2019, ‘What we can learn from the near death of the banana’. According to the details given in this article, every person on earth eats 130 bananas a year. Bananas are such an important fruit and when this story happened, the ‘Panama Disease’ was spreading very fast in countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala. Emergency was implemented in all these countries.
‘Panama Disease’ has spread in India too. The 4 most affected states are: Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. These four states will be more affected because only ‘Cavendish’ banana variety is cultivated here. If we know the market math of this banana, we can understand why farmers choose to cultivate ‘Cavendish Banana’ in India. Understand that if a farmer plants banana plants in one acre, it produces 250 quintals of bananas. The price of which is 10 to 12 rupees per kg and thus 3 lakh rupees per acre is produced. If the cost of one to one and a half lakh rupees is deducted, the net profit is up to one and a half lakh.
As this disease spread in India, no attention was paid to it at first. Farmers started to cure it in their own way, but banana plants started falling in these states. Millions of hectares of banana crops were destroyed. But India is currently trying to find a solution to ‘Panama Disease’ through an experiment and it seems to be successful to a large extent. That work ‘Indian Council of Agricultural Researchers'[ICAR] happened by. This research started in the year 2017 when a large banana crop was destroyed in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. At that time the scientists of ‘ICAR’ took the sample of the disease and started research on it.
A similar disease on chillies and tomatoes had already been researched by ‘ICAR’ earlier. The same method was determined and experimented with by ‘ICAR’ to protect bananas. Finally, in 2018, ICAR discovered a drug called ‘Fusecont’ with that technique, which was produced from a fungus called ‘Trichoderma EC’. This medicine protects plants from root rot. It has to be applied to the plants periodically, this interval is 14 or 16 months. It was first experimented in Uttar Pradesh and the farmers who sprayed the drug suffered less losses than other banana farms.
When the ‘Panama Disease’ was rampant, the same rules as ‘Covid-19’ were implemented in the farms to avoid it. For example, to prevent the spread of this disease from one farm to another, the equipment used in one place should be properly washed and used in another place. Moreover, after working in one farm, it is difficult to follow these rules after washing hands and feet properly and entering another farm, it has been proved in Corona. Hence the ‘Panama Disease’ spread rapidly everywhere. However, despite our country’s significant share in banana cultivation, the damage caused by ‘Panama Disease’ in India has not been fully assessed. Sporadic media reports have suggested it, but it has not been formally reported.
Food security requires such studies, comprehensive monitoring of various agricultural problems and their solutions. If it does not happen, then we have to be ready to bear the loss of human life in the corona epidemic in terms of food security. The last update in this whole chapter is that the researchers of the ‘International Atomic Energy Agency’ are trying to eradicate this disease through nuclear and the results are encouraging in the preliminary stages.