Food and Agriculture Organisation calls for global response to banana disease

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and its partners say that a global effort is needed to prevent the rapid spread of the deadly Fusarium wilt disease in bananas, which poses a severe threat to economic welfare and food security in developing countries.

Plant scientists have been warning for several years that the world’s most popular banana variety, the Cavendish, has fallen victim to a new strain of the fungus causing wilting and mass plant die-offs.