Control of Banana Wilt Disease

Abstract

Some years ago I reported in these columns an unusually interesting and important field experiment on the control of Panama (wilt) disease of bananas (Fusarium oxysporum cubense), which I had seen while travelling in Honduras¹. This consisted in flood-fallowing an area of about a hundred acres which had gone out of cultivation because of wilt disease. The area was empoldered (contained within earth embankments) and divided into sections, each of which was being kept submerged for a different period of time. This experiment was based on the observation that soil fungi, such as F. oxysporum, require oxygen to live, and that, when highly infected soil was submerged for one month under two feet of water, no living Fusarium could be found in it. At that time I wrote: “The outcome of this experiment will be awaited with the greatest interest by all associated with the extensive alluvial banana lands of Central America”. Already, at that time (1940), it had been found that in new land, built up by the sedimentation of controlled flood water, and therefore subjected to several inundations, the incidence of wilt disease was negligible.