Browsing: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

In 2015, the PLOS Pathogen journey noted that a fungus dubbed Tropical Race 4 had already decimated the crop in Southeast Asia over a number of decades.

According to the independent, the disease was first discovered in Australia, Jordan, Mozambique, Pakistan, the Middle East and Africa in 2013. It is so severe that it had destroyed whole plantations.

Fears were that it was just a matter of time before it landed in Latin America. At the time, in 2015, researchers warned that developing new banana cultivars was an arduously expensive affair that would probably not curtail the spread of the disease in time.

Years later, the banana crop remains resilient in most parts of Africa with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) saying that banana and plantain are important staple foods in many developing countries, especially in Africa.…

The aflatoxins have also been found in processed foods such as peanut butter and in animal-sourced foods like egg and milk.…