- 'National emergency' declared in Costa Rica, one of the biggest suppliers
- Country produces 1.2 million tons of bananas each year - one in five could be ruined by plagues of mealybugs and scale insects
- Elsewhere, banana-eating fungus from Asia and Australia is spreading
Costa Rica, one of the world's biggest suppliers of bananas, has declared a state of 'national emergency' following estimates suggesting one in five bananas could have been destroyed this year by insects
A state of 'national emergency' has been declared in Costa Rica, one of the world's biggest suppliers, while separately a banana-eating fungus from Asia is believed to be spreading.
Officials in the Central American country of Costa Rica fear that one in five bananas could have been ruined by insects this year. The country last year supplied 1.2 million tons of the fruit worldwide.
The director of the country's agriculture ministry's State Phytosanitary Services (SFE), Magda Gonzalez, told the Tico Times the rising number of mealybugs and scale insects on the country's Atlantic coast regions can be explained by rising temperatures along with changing rain patterns.
She said these conditions could shorten the insects' reproduction cycle by one third.
'I can tell you with near certainty that climate change is behind these pests,' she told the paper.
SFE has estimated that the pests have affected around 24,000 hectares of banana field in the Central American country.
Last year, Costa Rica exported more than 1.2 million tons of bananas, valued at more than $815 million, or around £500 million
Away from Costa Rica, the Scientific American has published a report warning of a variant of banana-eating fungus which is threatening other plantations across the world, which could spread to Latin America
The disease, believed to have been caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp.cubense (Foc), is believed to have spread after being located in Jordan and Mozambique.
The journal suggests the fungus may have arrived in the new countries by being passed on by migrant workers or the import of infected stems.
The pathogen, Foc-TR4, can affect the Cavendish cultivar bananas, which account for almost all bananas in the trade, particularly badly.
Previously, a strain of Foc wiped out the Gros Michel cultivar, which was the most popular banana export type between the 1800s and the 1950s.
Rony Swennen, a breeder at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, said it was a 'gigantic problem'.
Co-author of the report Gert Kema predicted the strain could spread to Latin America - which, along with the Carribbean, is where 80 per cent of the world's supply of bananas originate.
The Fusarium researcher at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands said: 'I'm incredibly concerned.'
WORLD'S MOST POPULAR FRUIT.
The banana is thought to be the world's most popular fruit, with people spending more than £10 billion on them every year.
Having originated in Asia, they have been cultivated for more than 4,000 years.
They are available all year round, and harvested every day of the year.
The average price of bananas in the UK dropped from £1.08 per kilogram in 1997 to as low as 50p in 2008, according to Fairtrade.
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