An Economic Assessment of Banana Genetic Improvement and ...

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38 CHAPTER 4
cash needs, the performance of endemic
banana cultivars deteriorated substantially.
Mat numbers for some endemic cultivars
diminished or they disappeared altogether
from individual farms and/or communities.
The extension services of the Department
of Agriculture in Tanzania were able to
recognize banana production constraints and
attempted to address them through emphasizing
good crop husbandry, including the
uprooting of diseased banana plants and use
of insecticides. The impacts of their efforts
were not impressive, however, given the high
cost of insecticides and the difficulty for
farmers to understand pest and disease complexes.
Legacies from the colonial era did
not improve farmers’ trust in government
recommendations. For example, farmers resisted
the order of the colonial government
to uproot all bananas infested by weevils, in
part because of misunderstandings (Kabwoto
1974). Toward the end of the 1960s, an insecticide
(dieldrin) was recommended for
the control of banana weevils. The Bukoba
Co-operative Union (BCU) supplied insecticides
free of charge and during that time, 60
percent of the farmers applied the insecticide
(Rald and Rald 1975). According to Bosch
et al. (1996), after dieldrin application, farmers
reported that banana plants fell over
more frequently than before and complained
that the insecticides “killed” their bananas.
Most of the farmers have since been reluctant
to apply chemical of any sort, including
artificial fertilizers, in their banana groves
(FSR 1989).
In Uganda, banana researchers identified
host-plant resistance as one of the most
feasible alternatives to control these problems
(Ortíz and Vuylsteke 1994; Tushemereirwe
et al. 2000), adopting a combination
of short- and long-term strategies. The
short-term strategy includes the assembly of
endemic and nonendemic germplasm for
evaluation and selection of resistant or tolerant
cultivars, including the importation of
hybrids from other breeding centers, such as
FHIA in Honduras and IITA in Ibadan,
Nigeria. The long-term strategy includes
breeding for resistance in the National Banana
Research Programme, NARO, Uganda.
The objectives of the overall approach are to
develop and disseminate banana genotypes
that are resistant to local pests and diseases,
have good agronomic characteristics, and
are acceptable to end users. A time line
identifying key dates and junctures in the
history of banana research in Uganda is
shown in Table 4.1.