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International Atomic Energy Agency
MAR 10 2022
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has trained scientists from six Latin American countries in using nuclear and related techniques to detect and contain a banana disease threatening a quarter of the global production of a crop that is providing jobs and nutrition for hundreds of millions of people around the world. The training included the development of genetic disease resistance in bananas.
One of the most devastating banana diseases in the world, the Fusarium or Panama wilt, is spreading rapidly in the region. It hurts global supplies of the world’s most popular export banana variety — the Cavendish.
In response to an urgent request from affected countries, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi last year pledged that the IAEA would provide immediate assistance in combating the disease and preventing it from causing further damage, working together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
“Immediately after receiving the request for assistance, we dispatched a technical mission to assess the situation and provide emergency assistance.
... In August last year, experts and authorities from the Andean community — Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru — reached out to the IAEA when they discovered the continuing spread of the latest variant of the Fusarium wilt disease, Tropical Race 4 (TR4), in the region. It has now spread to more than 20 countries around the world.
... The banana is one of the world’s top staple foods, with over 400 million people relying on this fruit for food security and income. The annual production of bananas across the globe amounts to some 155 million metric tons, with about 25 million tons exported from tropical countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world.
TR4 is a soil-borne disease, which can survive for decades in the soil, making it difficult to control. The only long-term response is to develop and deploy new banana varieties with effective disease resistance. This can be done thanks to mutation breeding – a process using irradiation techniques that help develop new disease resistant crop varieties for farmers. Confined to Southeast Asia for decades, TR4 was for the first time discovered in Latin America in 2019, causing a national emergency in Colombia, the fifth largest exporter of bananas in the world. ...
MAR 10 2022
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has trained scientists from six Latin American countries in using nuclear and related techniques to detect and contain a banana disease threatening a quarter of the global production of a crop that is providing jobs and nutrition for hundreds of millions of people around the world. The training included the development of genetic disease resistance in bananas.
One of the most devastating banana diseases in the world, the Fusarium or Panama wilt, is spreading rapidly in the region. It hurts global supplies of the world’s most popular export banana variety — the Cavendish.
In response to an urgent request from affected countries, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi last year pledged that the IAEA would provide immediate assistance in combating the disease and preventing it from causing further damage, working together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
“Immediately after receiving the request for assistance, we dispatched a technical mission to assess the situation and provide emergency assistance.
... In August last year, experts and authorities from the Andean community — Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru — reached out to the IAEA when they discovered the continuing spread of the latest variant of the Fusarium wilt disease, Tropical Race 4 (TR4), in the region. It has now spread to more than 20 countries around the world.
... The banana is one of the world’s top staple foods, with over 400 million people relying on this fruit for food security and income. The annual production of bananas across the globe amounts to some 155 million metric tons, with about 25 million tons exported from tropical countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world.
TR4 is a soil-borne disease, which can survive for decades in the soil, making it difficult to control. The only long-term response is to develop and deploy new banana varieties with effective disease resistance. This can be done thanks to mutation breeding – a process using irradiation techniques that help develop new disease resistant crop varieties for farmers. Confined to Southeast Asia for decades, TR4 was for the first time discovered in Latin America in 2019, causing a national emergency in Colombia, the fifth largest exporter of bananas in the world. ...
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