Panama Disease: A Classic and Destructive Disease of Banana

Panama disease, also known as Fusarium wilt of banana (Musa spp.), is one of the most notorious of all plant diseases (9,11). Although the pathogen probably originated in Southeast Asia, the disease was first reported in Australia in 1876 (7). By 1950, few banana-producing regions remained free of the disease. Panama disease is now found in all banana-producing regions except islands in the South Pacific, the Mediterranean, Melanesia, and Somalia (Fig. 1). Panama disease impacts the production of a wide range of banana cultivars (8). However, it is most widely known for damage it caused on a single cultivar in the early export plantations (6,11). Prior to 1960, the export trade was based almost entirely on the susceptible clultivar ‘Gros Michel.’ This reliance on Gros Michel and the common practice of using infected rhizomes to establish new plantations resulted in widespread and severe losses, especially in the western tropics (Fig. 2). In the Ulua Valley of Honduras alone, 30,000 hectares were lost between 1940 and 1960. Damage occurred more rapidly in areas such as Suriname, where an entire operation of 4,000 hectares was out of production within 8 years, and the Quepos area in Costa Rica, where it took 12 years for 6,000 hectares to be destroyed. Because it cost between $2,000 and $5,000 to establish a hectare of plantation at the time, direct losses during the Gros Michel era reached many millions of dollars. By the mid-1900s, the export trade was forced to convert to resistant cultivars in the Cavendish subgroup (8). These cultivars continue to perform well in the western tropics and remain the clones on which the trades are based (Fig. 3). However, in several areas in the Eastern Hemisphere these cultivars are now damaged by Panama disease (Fig. 4). These losses are significant, and signal a serious threat to production in the Western Hemisphere because there is currently no acceptable replacement for the Cavendish cultivars. Furthermore, because the variant of the pathogen that is responsible Fig. 1. Geographical distribution of Panama disease (click image for larger view).