![]() It has hit the market in Guadeloupe, and by the end of the year it could go on sale in the French mainland. The variety, dubbed CIRAD 925, has a slightly different taste. Researchers may soon be able to provide a solution: scientists at the France-based agricultural research centre CIRAD have developed a banana variety that is partially resistant to the disease. The final hurdle for many farmers is giving up treatments against the fungus that causes the leaf spotting disease called black sigatoka and can cause yields to plunge by half. Overall, banana growers in Guadeloupe have reduced by 70 percent their use of pesticides, according to Jacques Louisor of the Tropical Technical Institute. Since 2007 "we haven't used any pesticides, or nematicide (against roundworm parasites) and in 2014 we stopped using herbicides," he says.īutel has since started rotating sugar cane and bananas, while growing covering crops and deploying insect traps. ![]() Those factors combined have encouraged Butel to switch to more sustainable methods. On the positive side, attitudes are finally changing over the use of the pesticide chlordecone, which continues to pollute the soil despite being banned since 1990. In recent years, yields in areas where bananas are grown exclusively have been on the decline. We saw bats, and 300 or 400 other species living in the grove," Butel says. "Environmental activists had us visit banana groves at night.
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