Scientists in Uganda have developed GM bananas that show promising resistance to the deadly banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) disease.

Bananas are Uganda's leading non-cereal crop with some 70 per cent of the population depending on it as staple food. More than US$200 million has been lost to BXW infestation since 2001. The disease has also been reported in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania.

Now, the banana plants modified with two genes derived from sweet peppers (Capsicum annuum) show resistance to the disease caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum.

Principal investigator Leena Tripathi, a Ugandan-based biotechnologist from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Nigeria, said inserting the genes - plant ferredoxin-like amphipathic protein (PFLP) and hypersensitive response-assisting protein (HRAP) - separately in four local banana varieties is giving encouraging results (see GM bananas to fight wilt in Africa).

"In over five years of research, we've been able to insert genes into the East African highland banana varieties used for cooking (mpologoma and nakitembe), desserts (sukari ndizi) and brewing (kayinja). From these we've managed to develop resistant lines, which have proved effective in laboratory and screenhouse tests after deliberate exposure to BXW," Tripathi, who works on the project together with the Nairobi-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation and the National Agricultural Research Organization told SciDev.Net.

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