An Economic Assessment of Banana Genetic Improvement and ...

IMPACT OF TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS IN AFRICAN AGRICULTURE 7
in popular crop varieties, genes must be inserted
into well-adapted host cultivars that
are either conventionally bred or farmer selected.
The second criterion acknowledges
that genetic engineering of important export
crops makes them vulnerable to trade disputes,
regulations, and political lobbies outside
their borders. For traded commodities,
full market liberalization implies that shifts
in agricultural productivity may not translate
into lower food prices. For nontradable
food crops, downward pressure is exerted
on prices by seed technological change because
they are determined within borders
rather than on the international market.
This observation relates to the third criterion,
because the vast majority of smallholder
farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa consume
part of their food production and
many are net consumers. Both urban and
rural consumers in these countries will
benefit many times more from the price
decreases that accompany technological
change than will those of richer countries,
because food occupies a large proportion of
the budget of low-income people, and they
are more responsive to price changes in
terms of quantities demanded (Pinstrup-
Andersen and Cohen 2001).
Reduction of crop losses and yield increases
can still lead to a significant increase
in the income of poor households if
markets function well. Focusing on the productivity
of food crops, when bolstered by
stronger markets, will also have national
and regional income effects. Recent analyses
confirm the potential role of food staples
in domestic and intraregional markets as a
source of growth in demand for African
agricultural products and income, in comparison
with traditional and nontraditional
export crops (Diao and Hazell 2004).
In East Africa, the case of bananas genetically
transformed for resistance to pests
and disease meet these criteria. East Africa
is the largest banana-producing and bananaconsuming
region in Africa. This research
focuses on the principal banana-growing
areas around Lake Victoria in Uganda and
Tanzania, which form a contiguous area
stretching from the northeast portion of the
lake, through the historical locus of Ugandan
banana production in the Central Region
(including the new locus with more
market-oriented production in the southwest
highlands of Uganda), to the Kagera Region
in northwest Tanzania. The East African
highlands banana (EAHB) is the dominant
type grown throughout this expanse, and a
set of common biophysical factors constrain
productivity. As the chapters of this report
show, bananas are produced largely for food
consumption, with surpluses sold in town
and city markets. Growing urban markets
contribute to the importance of the crop as
a source of cash. Small quantities enter regional
trade, with negligible exports. The
population of the area is related linguistically
and culturally, though separated by
borders and administrative divisions, as well
as by important political and economic
differences.
Though the origin and center of diversity
for bananas is believed to be Southeast
Asia (Simmonds 1959), the East African
highlands is recognized as a second center
of diversity for an endemic genomic group
(AAA-EA), which comprises two groups
defined by their use in cooking and brewing
local beer. The endemic group is also classified
in terms of clone sets. All EAHBs are
triploids. With three genomes, as opposed
to two or four, few cultivars are fertile.
Though professional breeding of bananas
began during the 1920s, it was not until recently
that a major breakthrough was
achieved through the development of a hybridization
technique by the FHIA. Fertile
male diploids are used to pollinate triploid
cultivars to produce tetraploid hybrids.
These are crossed again with improved diploids
to give secondary triploids, from which
selections for release to farmers are obtained.
However, the endemic cultivars most
preferred by farmers are infertile and cannot
be improved by conventional means.
This difficulty of improving bananas by
means of conventional plant breeding tech-