By Kepher Otieno
A bacterial disease threatens to wipe out banana in parts of Nyanza, experts have warned.
The disease, identified as xanthomonas, is destroying banana plantations. Siaya and Bondo districts are worst affected.
Yesterday, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) scientists confirmed the spread of the disease and said lack of funds was frustrating efforts to contain it.
The outbreak comes in the wake of a famine in Nyanza following a poor maize harvest due to drought. Banana is a key staple food.
Kari Assistant Director Wasilwa Lusike told The Standard although they had received complaints and field reports from farmers and scientists, they could not do much to eradicate the disease.
"It is true the disease has been detected in Bondo and parts of Siaya and we are now devising ways of training farmers to contain it, but we do not have enough funds," Ms Lusike said on the telephone.
She said the disease symptoms include wilting and yellowing of leaves, excretion of a yellowish bacterial ooze, premature ripening of the bunch, rotting of fruit and internal yellow discoloration of the vascular bundles.
Scientists disclosed that plants are infected either by insects or soil-borne bacterial inoculums through the lower parts of the plant.
Short and long distance transmission mainly occur via contaminated tools and insects, though other organisms such as birds are also culprits, Lusike explained.
Although no banana variety with resistance to the disease has been identified, it appears that certain types have mechanisms to "escape the disease".
Lusike spoke as local farmers appealed to the Government to help them control the outbreak that threatened their livelihoods.
Led by retired agricultural extension officer Dan Ong’or, the farmers expressed fears that the disease would impoverish them.
