English

Abstract

Banana is an important crop in agriculture economy of Pakistan. Major production (about 90%) comes from the Sindh province, while around 10% is produced in the Baluchistan. It is an export commodity; Pakistan earned 2.5392 million U.S. dollars by exporting 58,786 metric ton out of 96,545 metric ton total production from 22,098 hectors, in 2011 (http://faostat.fao.org). Banana was first introduced in the Sindh in 1913 from Bombay (India). Later many varieties were brought at different times from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Among them Dwarf Cavendish (Basrai) proved superior in Sindh climate and was released for general cropping in late 1950s (Khalid and Soomro, 1993; Bhatti, 1991). Currently this is the major cultivated variety, while William hybrid which was introduced first in 1969, then in 1978 and in 1985 from Queensland, Australia (Khalid and Soomro, 1993) and some Chinese varieties which are recently being introduced, cover less than 10% area under cultivation. There are many economically important diseases of banana. These include bacterial diseases like bacterial soft rots of rhizome, pseudostem and bacterial wilt, while Banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) is the most devastating viral disease which is threatening Pakistan’s banana industry since 1991 (Hyder, 2009). Fungal specie i.e. Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Cubense (Foc) causes fusarium wilt or Panama disease, which is highly damaging disease of banana (Bentley et al., 2001). Recently in 2012 a disease has been noticed in few banana fields of district Thatta and Hyderabad in the Sindh, affecting Dwarf Cavendish (Basrai) plantation (Syed et al., 2015), showing symptoms similar to Panama disease. Based on the morphology of isolated fungus from infected plants, Syed and colleagues (2015) identified the pathogen as Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Cubense. In a parallel pioneering work, Ordonez and coworkers (2015) confirmed based on PCR diagnostics and mating experiments, that the tropical race 4 of Foc is causing Panama disease in Dwarf Cavendish plants in Pakistan (Ordonez et al., 2015). Fusarium oxysporum Schlecht emend. Snyder & Hansen is a soil born, diverse and quite adaptive ascomycete fungus that includes pathogenic strains infecting human, animal and plants and a diverse range of nonpathogenic strains (Gordon and Martyn, 1997; Fourie et al., 2011). The plant pathogenic strains are divided into special forms or formae speciales Pak. J. Agri. Sci., Vol. 54(1), xxx-xxx; 2017 ISSN (Print) 0552-9034, ISSN (Online) 2076-0906 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21162/PAKJAS/17.4674 http://www.pakjas.com.pk