The Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) is ramping up efforts to address pests and diseases in banana farming.
“We’re focusing on pest management. It doesn’t matter how well we produce if we lose from pest and diseases. We’re coordinating with the regional field offices to have management measures for that. Our research, we’re ramping it up,” Glenn Panganiban, BPI director, told reporters in an interview last week.
Panganiban said for surveillance and monitoring, BPI has partnered with the Philippine Space Agency to initiate a project that can verify the scope of damage of banana disease in the country.
Panganiban said BPI also plans to tap the academe and international organizations.
A market review of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released last month showed the Philippines remained the second top exporter of bananas in 2022, shipping 2.3 million tons of the fruit. But this is a 4 percent drop from 2.4 million tons in 2021.
FAO said the spread of fusarium wilt tropical race 4 disease as well as the high costs of inputs and fertilizers affected production of small-scale banana farmers in the Philippines.
The disease more commonly known as Panama disease, is caused by the soil-borne fungus Fusarium oxysporum that enters the banana plant’s roots and colonizes the xylem vessels, blocking the flow of water and nutrients which can cause the wilting and death of the crop.
A report from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed the country produced 9.01 million metric tons (MT) of bananas, down by 0.9 percent from 2021’s 9.09 million MT.
Banana varieties included in the statistics include bungulan, cavendish, lakatan, latundan and saba, among others.
Cavendish variety was the top banana variety for 2022 at 4.65 million MT or 51.6 percent of last year’s total banana production, followed by saba with 2.52 million MT or 27.9 percent of local production.
