Potato Farmers Conquer a Devastating Worm - With Paper Made From Bananas (science.org) 24
Low-tech approach can quintuple yield and slash need for soil pesticide. An anonymous reader shares a report: Potato cyst nematodes are a clever pest. These microscopic worms wriggle through the soil, homing in the roots of young potato plants and cutting harvests by up to 70%. They are challenging to get rid of, too: The eggs are protected inside the mother's body, which toughens after death into a cyst that can survive in the soil for years. Now, researchers have shown a simple pouch made of paper created from banana tree fibers disrupts the hatching of cyst nematodes and prevents them from finding the potato roots. The new technique has boosted yields fivefold in trials with small-scale farmers in Kenya, where the pest has recently invaded, and could dramatically reduce the need for pesticides. The strategy may benefit other crops as well.
"It's an important piece of work," says Graham Thiele, a research director at the International Potato Center who was not involved with the study. But, "There's still quite a lot of work to take it from a nice finding to a real-life solution for farmers in East Africa," he cautions. Soil nematodes are a problem for many kinds of crops. For potatoes, the golden cyst nematode (Globodera rostochiensis) is a worldwide threat. Plants with infected, damaged roots have yellowish, wilting leaves. Their potatoes are smaller and often covered with lesions, so they can't be sold. In temperate countries, worms can be controlled by alternating potatoes with other crops, spraying the soil with pesticides, and planting varieties bred to resist infection. These approaches aren't yet feasible in many developing countries, in part because pesticides are expensive and resistant varieties of potatoes aren't available for tropical climates. In addition, small-scale farmers, who can make decent money selling potatoes, are often reluctant to rotate their planting with less valuable crops.
"It's an important piece of work," says Graham Thiele, a research director at the International Potato Center who was not involved with the study. But, "There's still quite a lot of work to take it from a nice finding to a real-life solution for farmers in East Africa," he cautions. Soil nematodes are a problem for many kinds of crops. For potatoes, the golden cyst nematode (Globodera rostochiensis) is a worldwide threat. Plants with infected, damaged roots have yellowish, wilting leaves. Their potatoes are smaller and often covered with lesions, so they can't be sold. In temperate countries, worms can be controlled by alternating potatoes with other crops, spraying the soil with pesticides, and planting varieties bred to resist infection. These approaches aren't yet feasible in many developing countries, in part because pesticides are expensive and resistant varieties of potatoes aren't available for tropical climates. In addition, small-scale farmers, who can make decent money selling potatoes, are often reluctant to rotate their planting with less valuable crops.
We need more drugs! (Score:2)
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That's only the Cavendish banana that's facing a threat from a particular fungus that's adapted to it. It's the inevitable end for monocultures. See also the Irish potato famine, where the fungus actually came from North America where it wasn't a huge issue because of the wider variety of potato types grown there. Importing red potatoes to grow in Ireland would have been an effective workaround if it were not for the political factors at play that made a famine in Ireland desirable to the people in charge (
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Most bananas are clones (the truth is a little bit more complicated than that).
Well, yeah, they're a monoculture. People like their fruit to be seedless where possible (you can see the traces of the seeds in the banana, but they're undeveloped and unviable) so various fruits are bred to be seedless and grown from cuttings. Watermelon, grapes, bananas, etc. I believe new banana trees are usually grown from root cuttings. So the rate of mutation, and thus adaptation is very slow. In the meantime, pests are able to adapt more quickly, especially rapidly reproducing organisms like fungi.
Big agri says no (Score:1)
Mechanism of action ... (Score:3)
So here is the summary for those curious ...
- They were experimenting with a pesticide on banana paper to reduce the pesticide dose required. ...
- They found that banana paper on its own (with no pesticide) worked almost as well
- Turns out that the potato releases a compound called alpha-chaconine which also acts as a signal for the nematode cyst to hatch.
- The banana paper absorbs 94% of this compound so the nematodes do not hatch.
Cool stuff ...
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Having RTFA'd myself, I corroborate this summary.
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No points, thank you for trimming the crap.
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Curiously, the banana plants are all under severe threat due to some sort of fungus or bacteria. Banana plants dont have seeds and they are basically monoculture. They have no protection against that fungus. May be if we test and find potato peels protect against that fungus that would be even more cool.
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DIY Grass (Score:2)
The article discussed wrapping the potato plant's roots in the banana paper.
I'm wondering if I can get any effect from simply using banana peels with my front lawn. Our region loses lots of good grass to nematodes. The grass is healthy, but the roots are nill, then the grass dies suddenly.
Perhaps the next time I lay sod, I'll lay it over banana peels. Perhaps my annual lawn aeration can shove ground peels into the soil too. I don't need the perfection that potato farmers need. So it sounds like there's
Re: DIY Grass (Score:2)
Best case - you are the proud owner of a banana plantation
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Best case -- I'm the proud owner of a banana plantation in a climate in which no one thought bananas could grow!
Fantastic! (Score:2)
It doesn't matter if it is low-tech or high-tech, if it works then it works! This is a far more sustainable approach to agriculture. No need for genetic engineering or pesticides, just an understanding of the problem. We need more solutions like this because biological solutions are far superior to merely spraying poisons.
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To be clear, they're not advocating complete elimination of pesticides, they are proposing that very small amounts of pesticides (0.5 percent of what they would normally use) still be embedded in the paper.
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I see. Well, it's a step in the right direction. A purely biological source of a pesticide would be the ideal.
How do we patent this? (Score:2)
Because a great inventionin itself isn't worth anything until a big agri company can protect it with a patent.
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Crop rotation (Score:2)
" worms can be controlled by alternating potatoes with other crops ... These approaches aren't yet feasible in many developing countries ..."
If crop rotation works, it's cheaper.
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The field in front of my in home northeast Florida has been continuous potato production for over 100 years, except for the last two years. I owned and farmed it from 1971 to 1995. Last year corn prices were so high the farmer planted corn instead. With corn prices at near record highs corn was deemed more profitable. This year the input costs were too much and exp