You are here
Home | Banana Board Urges Vigilance to Prevent TR4 Disease from Entering Island
General Manager of the Banana Board, Janet Conie
May 21 (JIS):
Jamaicans travelling to countries where Tropical Race 4 (TR4) is present are urged to be cautious in their movements to prevent transmission of the disease.
TR4 disease of banana or fusarium wilt is a deadly disease of bananas and plantains. Currently in Venezuela, the disease is soil borne and can spread rapidly, potentially devastating the local banana sector if brought into the island.
Speaking in an interview with JIS News, General Manager of the Banana Board, Janet Conie, said that TR4 is not in Jamaica, and it is “very important” to keep it out of the country.
She noted that while there is a national action plan to protect the banana industry, persons need to be aware of what they can do to prevent TR4 from entering the island.
“Persons need to know that this disease exists in Venezuela, very close to Trinidad and can move. It moves on shoes, tools, clothing and in plant parts. While we are preparing ourselves, if we find it… to try and eliminate it as best as possible, the best method is prevention. How we prevent it is that people have to be aware so they don’t go into any banana fields anywhere overseas,” she said.
“If you should go, we are telling you don’t wear those shoes back to Jamaica. We don’t want any soil from those fields, should they have the disease, to come back to the country,” she emphasised.
Ms. Conie further advises persons visiting countries where TR4 is present to not take plantain or heliconia plant parts back to Jamaica. “They might look very pretty but we don’t want it,” she noted.
She assures that the Banana Board is continuing its work to keep the disease out of Jamaica, by focusing on strengthening the island’s diagnostics capabilities.
“Diagnostics is important because should the disease come, we want to be able to find it quickly. Surveillance does that; surveils of the field to detect if we have it. We have to be able to sample and diagnose that disease and that involves biotechnologies being capable of doing that in the lab,” she noted.
“We have to ensure that we have confirmatory labs overseas that can help us to confirm. These are the things that the scientists do behind the scenes and to ensure that we can hit the ground running should that case ever come,” she told JIS News.
