The Department of Agriculture (DA) said it has found an organic way to combat a disease, which causes importing countries to reject shipments of bananas from the Philippines.
The Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech), an attached agency of the DA, said field trials conducted on biocontrol agents to fight crown-rot disease that usually afflicts
bananas showed promise.
“Field trials on a commercial export scale showed that the two species of epiphytes—Bacillus spp. strain DGA14 [a bacteria] and Trichoderma spp. strain DGA02 [a fungi]—were both effective as microbial control agents [MCAs] in combating the crown-rot disease,” PhilMech Executive Director Dionisio G. Alvindia said in a statement.
Alvindia said these biocontrol agents could kill the disease-causing pathogens. The agents also serve as a protective spray against storage pests, like grain weevils and borers, he added.
He said these biocontrol agents could help cut the rejection rate of bananas bound for export to 1.5 percent, from the usual 20 percent.
“The 1.5-percent rejection rate would really increase the exporters’ income, given the additional amount of exports,” PhilMech said. The agency, however, did not give an estimate.
The crown-rot disease starts from the tissues where the banana cluster was cut, spreads to the whole cluster and destroys the whole commodity. The disease usually occurs during the shipment period of fruits, PhilMech added.
“With our findings, what PhilMech can explore is to commercialize the use of the technology and conduct trials on other tropical fruits, like mango, that are bound for the export market,” Alvindia said.
The field tests were conducted at Alter Trade Corp. (ATC), an exporter of organic agricultural products based in Bacolod and Dumaguete City. PhilMech said the tests were done during the rainy season, when crown-rot disease-causing pathogens proliferate faster.
“The field tests showed MCA spray reduced dramatically the rejection rates of Cavendish banana shipped to Japan,” Alvindia said.
The rejection rate for the said variety of bananas was 1.5 percent, 29 days after treatment, meaning the pathogens causing the banana crown-rot disease were kept in check for almost a month, PhilMech said.
The agency said the researchers monitored three factors during the field tests: crown rot index (0-7, where 0 means disease-free); visual quality (1-6, where 6 denotes excellence) and peel color (0-7, where 7 means yellow).
“The bananas treated with MCA-formulated spray recorded a crown-rot index at a very low 0.6 for DGA14 and 0.475 for DGA02. In visual quality, the rating was 5 and 4.75 for DGA14 and DGA02, respectively. When it came to peel color, the DGA14-treated bananas rated at 5 and DGA02-treated at 4.75,” PhilMech said.
Alvindia said ATC exports Balangon banana, a local cultivar of the Cavendish banana, amounting to an average of 2,800 boxes to Japan weekly.