The new strain of Tropical Race 4 (TR4) of fusarium wilt disease has the potential to cause extensive devastation to banana industry in the country if it is not contained on a war footing, said S. Uma, Director, ICAR National Research Centre for Banana (NRCB), Tiruchi.
She was speaking at a workshop on “Sensitisation of tissue culture industries in preventing the spread of newly emerging disease - Fusarium wilt (Tropical Race 4) of banana” hosted by NRCB here recently.
Ms. Uma said there was an urgent need to sensitise tissue culture companies to the disease as it was confined to some parts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Companies had the onus to produce quality and disease-free planting material for banana farmers.
She explained NRCB’s initiatives to screen banana cultivar for TR4 resistance in the hotspots of Bihar and identification of a few varieties showing resistance to the dreaded disease.
According to a NRCB note, the Indian banana industry was worth of ₹50,000 crore per annum. Popular commercial cultivar Grand Naine (G-9), which was resistant to fusarium wilt disease and ruling the last three decades, became susceptible to the new strain, fusarium wilt TR4.
As the Grand Naine banana contributed $20 billion in global trade and was now under threat due to TR4, efforts were being made to manage the disease through various programmes. The new strain affecting Cavendish banana had been detected in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, devastating the crop. If unchecked, it was expected to cause a serious threat to the banana industry as it affected most of the commercial varieties of India including traditional bananas.
NRCB was sensitising stakeholders of banana industry such as extension workers, State government officials, tissue culture industries and policy-makers.
The workshop was attended by delegates representing major tissue culture companies from different parts of India. R.R. Hanchinal, Consultant, Bioversity International, who was a special invitee, emphasised the need for survey and surveillance of TR4-affected areas by intensive surveys.
Concerted efforts involving all stakeholders and use of novel biotechnological approaches and breeding resistant cultivars were required to combat the deadly disease in the long term.
He extended the support of international agencies such as Bioversity International to procure resistant material from international institutes.
B.N.S. Murthy, Horticulture Commissioner, Union Ministry of Agriculture, said India could learn from the experiences of Australia and South East Asian countries where TR4 was a problem. He offered to flag policy issues at the ministry level for addressing the problem as banana was a major and affordable fruit consumed widely by all sections.
N. Kumar, Vice Chancellor, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, observed that TR 4 was a huge challenge for the banana industry as quarantine measures would be difficult to implement and cooperation of all stakeholders was needed to tackle this emerging disease.
He said TNAU would collaborate with NRCB in evaluation and validation of control measures for TR4 for the benefit of banana farmers.