Bananas

Land preparation

• Put in place erosion control system,
• Ploughing first to remove the weeds;
• Ploughing the second time to level the land to receive the suckers.

 

• Preparation of planting the hole  :Planting holes should be at least 0.6 m deep and 0.9 m in diameter .

The surface ground containing humus is turned over in the hole and mixed up with organic manure.

Planting Bananas

1. Choosing Banana suckers :
   • Prepare planting holes as mentioned above

• Choose the suckers: the best suckers to use are 1.8-2.1m in height and have thin, sword-shaped leaves, although smaller suckers should work well if the mother plant is healthy
• If the sucker is still attached to a mother plant, remove it by cutting forcefully downward with a clean shovel. Include a significant portion of the underground base (corm) and its attached roots.
• A rhizome (corm) without notable suckers can be chopped into pieces. Each piece with a bud will grow into a banana plant, but this will take longer than using a sucker.
• Cut off any dead, insect-eaten, rotting or discolored sections of the plant. If most of the plant is affected, dispose of it away from other plants and find another planting material.

1. Cleaning banana Plant and planting :

• Heat the water up to 50^oC
• Then after, remove all the fire and put a rhizome (corm)  for 20 minutes
• Fill the hole with loose, rich soil. Leave several centimeters (a few cm) of space at the top to encourage drainage.
• The ideal soil acidity for bananas is between pH 5.5 and 7. Acidity pH 7.5 or higher can kill the plant.
• Place the plant upright in the new soil.  The plant supposed to be in  the middle of the hole to a depth of 20 centimeters ( 20 cm)
•  Then cut the plant  and leave the height of  20 centimeters ( 20cm)

1. Weeding:
   • Remove any plants or weeds that are growing on the planting site, to ensure manure and fertilizer used to the plant are  productive and avoid the pest and disease,
   • Mulching also protect the farm against pert and disease.
2. Thinning:
   • Remove dead leaves and banana plants and chop them up to place around the live plants. Other yard waste and wood ash can also be added to return nutrients to the soil.
   • De-sucker your plants. Once your plant is mature and has several suckers, remove all but one to improve fruit yield and plant health.
   • Cut all but one sucker off at ground level and cover the exposed plant with soil. Repeat with a deeper cut if they grow back.
   • The surviving sucker is called the follower and will replace the mother plant after it produces the banana bunch.
   • Exceptionally healthy plants can support two followers.
3. Banana fertilization
   • Use fertilizer, compost, manure, or a mixture of these. Add fertilizer immediately after planting in an even ring around the banana plant and repeat at monthly intervals.
   • Fertilizers are usually labeled with three numbers (N-P-K) representing the amount of Nitrogen, Phosphorus (Potash), and Potassium. Bananas require very high amounts of Potassium, but the other nutrients are important as well. You can use a balanced fertilizer (three numbers roughly equal) or a fertilizer that addresses deficiencies in your soil.
   • Do not use manure produced in the last few weeks, as the heat it releases while decomposing can damage the plant
   • If you do not have manure, use banana leaves or another grasses that can be decomposed quickly.
4. Watering/ Irrigation:

• Water frequently but avoid overwatering.
•  Lack of water is a common cause of banana plant death, but overwatering can cause the roots to rot.
• In warm growing weather without rain, you may need to water your plant daily, but only if the top 1.5–3 cm of soil is dry.
• Reduce the amount of water per session if the plant is sitting in water for long periods. (That can cause root rot).
• In cooler temperatures when the banana is barely growing, you may only need to water once every week or two. Remember to check soil moisture.
• Leaves help evaporate excess moisture, so be careful not to soak (just moisten) a young plant that has not yet grown leaves.

1. Mulching:

Mulch is dry, vegetative material used to cover the soil.  It helps reduce evaporation and retain moisture, reduce soil erosion, suppress weed growth and provide plant nutrients as the material decomposes.

• What are the advantages of mulching?
  • Mulch keeps the soil underneath moist longer than bare soil.
  • Controls soil erosion by cushioning the impact of rain drops and by slowing runoff.
  • Suppresses weeds by shading them out.
  • Leads to healthy crop growth.
• What are the disadvantages?
  • Mulching is labour-intensive.
  • It can introduce new pests and diseases into a field.
  • Mulch material may not be available.

• How to do it:

• Carry to the Field the material you want to spread as mulch.
•  Spread it on the soil using your hands or a rake. Put a layer of mulch 7-15 cm (3-6 inches) deep all over the bed, or around the growing plants.
• Do not put on so much mulch that you bury the plants or shade them out.
• Use dry plant material that does not rot quickly.
• Do not use wet or green material as mulch.

1. Debudding:
   • When?
     • Once the banana fingers have all come out, remove the bud.
   • Why?
     •  To remove the bud protects the banana plant against Banana BXW disease
     • The bunches grows properly once the bud is removed.

1. 1. anana Bacterial Wilt (BXW)

1. BXW Symptoms :
   • This disease is also known as Banana Xanthomonas wilt or BXW and it is native in Ethiopia and outside Ethiopia reported in 2001 ( Rwanda, Kenya, DRC, Uganda and Tanzania)
   • BXW infects all parts of the plant.
   • a progressive yellowing and wilting of leaves
   • With fruits ripening prematurely and unevenly with internal brown discoloration.
   • When stems are cut, a pocket of pale yellow bacterial ooze appears within 5-15 min
   • Yellow or brown streaks occur in vascular tissues of the infected plan
   • Gradual wilting and plus wilting of the bracts and shriveling of the male buds.
   • flower stalks turning yellow-brown
   • Plant death commonly results from the infection.
2. Management of the Banana Xanthomonas Wilt

Example of some control measure are as follow:

• Use of clean planting materials,
•  Clean tools which are sterilized in fire or diluted sodium hypochloride, de-budding by breaking the male buds with a forked stick,
• Cutting and burying of the diseased plants,
• Crop rotation.

Fusarium wilt (Banana panama disease)

• Panama disease is caused by the fungus Fusarium (the full name is Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense). It is a soil pathogen which infects the root system and goes on to colonise the plant through the vascular system – hyphae of the fungus can even reach the leaves. The disease cannot be controlled or cured other than by soil treatments, which unfortunately have such a detrimental effect on the environment that they are prohibited almost everywhere. Biological methods under development are showing great potential, however. One of the worst effects of Panama disease is the production of so-called chlamydospores , or resting spores, which survive in the soil for decades. As soon as a susceptible banana plant is grown nearby, these spores germinate, infect the plant, and kill it.
• This is a soil – borne fungal disease and gets entry in the plant body through the roots.
• It is most serious in poorly drained soil.

1. Symptoms :

The first internal symptoms develop in feeder roots, the initial sites of infection (1,11). They progress to the rhizome and are most prominent where the stele joins the cortex. As the pseudostem is colonized, faint brown streaks or flecks become evident on and within older leaf sheaths. Eventually, large portions of the xylem turn a brick red to brown color.

The first external symptoms of Panama disease are a yellowing of the oldest leaves  or a longitudinal splitting of the lower portion of the outer leaf sheaths on the pseudostem. This is followed by a wilt and buckling of leaves at the petiole base. In some cases, these leaves remain green. As the disease progresses, younger and younger leaves collapse until the entire canopy consists of dead or dying leaves.

1. Disease Control :

Prevention is the most effective disease control measure. To help prevent Panama disease tropical race 4 from infecting your property, implement on-farm biosecurity practices such as wash-down and decontamination procedures and always use clean, disease free planting material such as tissue culture plants or plants from a proven disease free source.

Managing access to properties and training staff in hygiene management and early disease detection is vital to ensuring early identification and preventing disease introduction.

SIGATOKA BANANA DISEASE ( Black and Yellow banana Sigatoka)

• Sigatoka is one of the serious diseases affecting banana crop.

Symptoms :

The first symptoms of black Sigatoka disease are tiny, chlorotic spots that appear on the bottom (abaxial) surface of the 3rd or 4th open leaf. The spots grow into thin brown streaks that are limited by leaf veins (Figure 1). The color of the streaks becomes darker, sometimes with a purple tinge, and visible on the top (adaxial) surface. The lesions then enlarge, becoming fusiform or elliptical, and darken to give the characteristic black streaking of the leaves (Figure 2). Adjacent tissue often has a water-soaked appearance, especially under conditions of high humidity.

Control and Management :
Fungicide is frequently applied in areas that have succumbed to the disease, marking no-tolerance zones in areas where there used to be some fungal activity.

Affected leaves are carefully removed without contact with the rest of the plants in the hectare, to isolate the disease to a single region of a plant.
As a precaution, herbs are planted with adequate spacing in between “individuals” (although most bananas in a plantation are of one genotype).

Pools of water where spores could rest during their journey of infection are minimized by building drains that sufficiently collect and channel water to a region far from the banana plantation.

Banana Weevil (Cosmopolites sordidus )

Symptoms

The infestation by C. sordidus begins at the base of the dying outermost leaf-sheath and in injured tissues at the lower part of the pseudostem. Initially the young larvae make several longitudinal tunnels in the surface tissue until they are able to penetrate to adjacent inner leaf-sheaths; the larvae then bore into the pseudostem base and rhizome (in bananas, also into the base of suckers and into roots). Larval tunnels may run for the entire length of fallen pseudostems.

Infested plants have dull yellow green and floppy foliage. Young infested suckers often wither and fail to develop. In a high wind more than average numbers of plants blow down, at times with severe losses.

The young suckers attacked by the borers wither and die very quickly because of larval feeding and tunneling between the lateral roots and the corm. An indication that a young plant is infested is the withering and drying of the curled roll of unopened leaves or growing part of the plant.

Control measures

• Pest traping Surround the banana plant with Banana pars in a distance of 20 centimeters from banana tree because its eggs or pest can go for hiding under them. The fourth day, collect the pests and kill them or burn them
• Plant stems or mats should be cleaned of plant debris.
• Use of resistant varieties such as Kayinja, FHIA 17and FHIA 25,
• Clean planting material before planting using a hot water treatment: immerse clean trimmed suckers in a
• bath with hot water at 52 to 55°C for 15 to 27 minutes before planting (place a candle  in the hot water –
• when it melts the temperature will be at about this level);
• Good agricultural practices: remove old leaves, rhizome, keep mulch away from the tree (60 cm),
• weeding, application of fertilizers where required
• Pare suckers to remove weevil larvae and eggs as well as nematodes;
• Replace infested plantation with different crops (among food crops)
• and replant banana after 3-4 years.

 

Picture showing banana weevil collection 

An infected banana plant and bunch

Banana bunchy top disease affects the banana fruit and foliage, and is caused by a single-strand DNA virus, the banana bunchy top virus. BBTV can infect species of the Musaceae family, which includes bananas, plantains, abaca, and more. It is best to establish a banana production area where these alternate hosts are not present. Any age plants can be infected by this virus, but some varieties of banana, including the Cavendish, are more susceptible to the virus. In areas where the virus is less common, the disease is usually spread by planting diseased suckers at the beginning of the season, which means the season is started with a diseased crop.

Control measures

• There are no resistant varieties of banana against BBTV, so the most common method of control is chemical control of the aphid vectors.
• Another way to help control the virus is to remove and destroy any infected plants before the virus can spread.
• Quarantines are also implemented to prevent the import of any potentially infected plant materials, Fruit is not often produced on infected plants, but if it is, the fruit will be deformed, which easily identifies if there is any virus present in the fruits to comply with quarantine regulations;
• Since bananas are not the only host, the alternate hosts for both the virus and the aphid must also be monitored for disease, and sprayed with pesticides to control the aphids more.

Banana Streak virus

Banana streak virus (BSV) is a plant pathogenic virus of the family Caulimoviridae. The primary symptoms of disease are chlorotic streaks on leaves and splitting of the pseudostem. In later stages of the disease, these streaks may become necrotic, and the heart of the pseudostem may rot, ultimately leading to death of the plant.

Control measures

• Infected plants should be destroyed and replaced with virus free plants.
• Only tissue cultures derived from meristems from virus-tested plants should move internationally and be mass multiplied. Even then, care must be taken because of the possible de novo synthesis of the virus in tissue culture.

Harvesting

Banana is ready for harvest after 12-15 months for brewing banana and between 18-20 months for cooking banana. The yield ranges between 8 and 20 metric tons when the banana have been planted and managed following technical advice from agricultural  professionals . Banana takes 75-80 days from flower production to mature fruit.  Once you have ascertained that it is time for banana tree harvesting, use a sharp knife and cut the “hands” off. You can leave 15-20 cm of stalk on the hand, if you wish, to make it easier to carry, especially if it is a large bunch. You may end up with one or many hands when harvesting banana trees. The hands do not usually mature all at once, which will extend the time you have to consume them. Once you are done harvesting the banana trees, store them in a cool, shady area – not the refrigerator, which will damage them.

Post-harvest management

After harvesting the bananas, the farmer will use them according to their types and varieties:

• Cooking bananas are cooked as needed or sold at the market
• Brewing bananas are ripened and brewed into juice, banana wines or liquor
• Dessert bananas are ripened and eaten or sold at the market.