Management of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt: Evidence from Impact of Adoption of Cultural Control Practices in Uganda

Enoch M Kikulwe,Eldad Karamura,William Tinzaara,Samuel Mpiira,Joseph Lule Kyanjo,Walter Ocimati,Jerome Kubiriba,Reuben T Ssali,Elisabetta Gotor,Dietmar Stoian,Edward Kato,Rockefeller Erima

doi:10.3390/su11092610

Abstract

Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) is an important emerging and non-curable infectious plant pathogen in sub-Saharan Africa that can cause up to 100% yield loss, negatively impacting sustainable access to food and income to more than 100 million banana farmers. This study disentangles adopters into partial and full adopters to investigate the factors that are relevant to sustain the adoption process of BXW control practices and quantifies the impact of adopting the practices. Data from a randomly selected sample of 1200 banana farmers in Uganda where the disease is endemic was used. A multinomial logit model was used to determine the factors affecting adoption of control practices and augmented inverse probability weighting was employed to estimate the impacts of adoption on banana productivity and sales. Results show that training a woman farmer and having diverse sources of information about BXW control practices increased adoption of the control practices and reduced the disease incidences. Farmers who adopted all the recommended control practices achieved significantly the highest values of banana production and sales. We conclude that improving information access through farmers’ preferred communication channels, having women-inclusive trainings, and a combination of cultural practices are effective ways for sustaining adoption of the control practices.

Highlights

Emerging infectious diseases caused by plant pathogens can develop into pandemics across regions and have the potential to cause serious socio-economic disasters
Among the three Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) control practices, significantly more households practiced cutting down diseased plants/mats, followed by disinfection of tools
Significant differences were observed in terms of adoption level of BXW control practices and Sustainability 2019, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW

Summary

Introduction

Emerging infectious diseases caused by plant pathogens can develop into pandemics across regions and have the potential to cause serious socio-economic disasters. Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) is one of the four most important emerging infectious diseases in developing countries that threaten the food security and income of smallholder banana farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [1]. Since its outbreak in Uganda in 2001, the disease spread to DR Congo (2001), Rwanda (2002), Tanzania, Kenya (2005), and Burundi (2010) [4]. The impact of BXW on bananas is extreme and rapid [2]. When plants/plantations are attacked by the BXW-causing bacteria, Xanthomonas campestris pv. Nkuba et al [7] valued losses caused by the disease at USD 10.2 million and USD 2.95 million in Tanzania and Rwanda, respectively

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion