Climate change boosts banana disease
10 May 2019 by Evoluted New Media
Climate change has been found to raise the risk of a fungal disease in banana crops.
The University of Exeter found that higher temperatures and an increase in atmospheric moisture caused by global warming has raised the risk of the Black Sigatoka in banana-growing areas of Latin America.
Ecologist Dr Dan Bebber said: "Despite the overall rise in the risk of Black Sigatoka in the areas we examined, drier conditions in some parts of Mexico and Central America have reduced infection risk."
Black Sigatoka disease is caused the Pseudocercospora fijiensis fungus, the lifecycle of which is dependent on weather and microclimate.
When exposed to light, the fungus, which spreads via aerial spores, infects banana leaves and causes streaked lesions and cell death. Black Sigatoka can reduce the fruit produced by infected plants by up to 80%.
Moisture and temperature changes have increased the risk of the disease by more than 44% in Latin American and the Caribbean since the 1960s.
The university's study has been published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
