Fusarium Race 4 keeps Ecuador’s banana sector on alert. The pest found in Colombia, Peru and Venezuela is forcing authorities to step up preventive measures to prevent the fungus from reaching the soil of Ecuador, the largest banana exporter in the region with more than 176,000 hectares concentrated in Guayas, Los Ríos and El Oro; and to a lesser extent in Cotopaxi, Manabí and Esmeraldas, according to official data.

In this context, Patricio Almeida, executive director of the Phyto and Zoosanitary Regulation and Control Agency (Agrocalidad), revealed this Friday, September 15, that the country invests about 9 million dollars a year to protect Ecuador from the plague. He did this during a regional meeting to prevent the entry of Fusarium Race 4, which was developed in Guayaquil, with the participation of international experts such as Miguel Dita, senior scientist at Alliance Bioversity International and CIAT.

How much is Ecuador investing in keeping its bananas free of Fusarium Race 4?

In addition, a workshop was held to update the methodology and protocols for combating the plague, with the aim of developing regional protocols to be applied in the countries of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN): Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador.

Meanwhile, regarding investments in Ecuador, Almeida pointed out: “Prevention plans have their price, they have their value and we are at that stage. There are two scenarios: preventive, which we are in, but of course we have to prepare in case it is necessary to react,” said Almeida. The official specified that two projects are underway, the Fusarium Race 4 project, in which about 400 technicians are engaged, with the support of some teams that support work in the field, and the project to improve the laboratory’s analytical capacities. “These are two projects that complement each other precisely to make these capacities ready,” said Almeida.

Regarding the amount of funds invested, the head of Agrocalidado warned that it would be a different scenario in case the pest arrives in Ecuador when the control and eradication phase is activated. “There is another kind of budget that is managed so that, if necessary, we can implement all the necessary actions,” Almeida said.

He also warned that the private sector must also “do its homework” and apply biosecurity measures on its farms, and criticized alleged comments that because of the low price of bananas, they will not invest in these measures on certain farms. “That cannot happen, we have been running these programs since 2011 and every year we develop training like this year for about 9,300 actors. So, we cannot mix political issues, commercial issues with such sensitive issues…”

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The causative agents of plague found in Colombia and Peru are different from each other

For her part, Dita confirmed that Fusarium Race 4 was not found in Ecuador. On the one hand, there is evidence of field tests that gave negative results for the pest carried out by Agrocalidad, but the Costa Rican expert, with more than 20 years of experience in managing multidisciplinary teams, also found that the pathogens found in Peru and Colombia are different, which is why he assured that the plague did not pass through Ecuador to reach its southern neighbor from the coffee-growing country.

In Colombia, the fungus was discovered in 2019 in the Guajira sector, while in Peru it was confirmed in 2021 in the Piura department; and recently, last August, in the same area, but in organic banana plantations.

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“They’re both race 4, but there are full genome sequencing technologies for those pathogens that tell you if they’re similar or not,” Dita explained. Regarding the plague discovered in Venezuela, he revealed that they did not have access to the genome found in that country.

Meanwhile, the expert highlighted the growth of Ecuador’s analytical capabilities in its fight against Fusarium Race 4. “We have been working with Ecuador for a long time and we could see the growth of capabilities, the advantages of Ecuador that today has the capabilities, the most advanced techniques for molecular diagnostics and not only staff training, but an overview of all processes, a mapping of those processes”, Dita pointed out.

As for what to do in the second phase, when there is a Fusarium outbreak in Ecuador, the Central American expert indicated: “We have to see, I hope it never comes, we have to buy time, and the time we really get is so that we don’t improvise when it happens. urgently, here we are gaining experience with Peru and Colombia to feed Ecuador,” he said.