Smallholder farmers in Colombia have been working side by side with international and national agricultural scientists and extension agents for the past three years to save their plantain stands from bacterial wilt— a collaborative campaign against moko, a plantain disease.

Among the more promising weapons in the emerging moko-management arsenal is a biopesticide that does double duty as an organic fertilizer. The liquid, called a “lixivium,” is produced inexpensively on-farm by composting plantain residues, specifically the hanging, spine-like shafts called rachises from which the flowers and fruit protrude. This is the part of the plant that farmers routinely discard after harvest.

“We wanted to give the farmers simple, easy-to-use solutions because they don’t like complex technology,” says Silverio González, Director, National Federation of Plantain Producers of Colombia (FEDEPLATANO) and the chief designer of the composting system. “Our members prefer to solve problems using their own local resources, so they do not have to spend too much money.”

The FEDEPLATANO project was one of three winners in the 2004 Innovation Marketplace, a competition and exhibition held during the Annual General Meeting 2004 designed to strengthen CGIAR partnerships with civil society organizations.

Club del Moko

FEDEPLATANO is one of several public and private stakeholder groups that form the Club del Moko, a broad alliance working on R. solanacearum diagnostics and the design and testing of disease-control measures. Other key alliance mem­bers include CIAT, the Colombian Institute for Agriculture and Livestock (Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario, ICA), the Colombian Corporation for Agricultural Research (Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria, CORPOICA), and IPGRI’s International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP).

Several years ago, as the moko prob­lem steadily worsened, farmers approached ICA and other institutions for help. Producers were also worried about the ill effects of continuously applying Formol (formaldehyde) on human health and the environment, one of the recommended pesticides for killing bacteria in the soil. The economic repercussions also concerned them since Formol’s high toxicity rendered the soil lifeless, thus undermining production of other crops such as coffee, cassava and maize.

All the while, the researchers and farmers were tracking the expansion of the moko epidemic. Their projections were alarming. “We suspected it would take only 2 years to destroy 27,000 hectares of plantain in Quindío Department alone,” recalls González.

Collaborative Research: CIAT's Role

Elizabeth Alvarez, a CIAT plant pathologist with long experience in farmer participatory research, sketches the background of CIAT’s involvement. “In the hope of finding a solu­tion to the moko epidemic, the farmers decided to approach CIAT for help. The reason they didn’t come to us earlier was that they thought we worked only on beans, cassava, rice, and forages. That was true a long time ago; my mandate, for example, was cassava diseases. But then we ended up helping out a group of flower growers who had a mildew problem. So the directors of CIAT allowed us to begin helping clients outside our traditional set of crops, on a demand-driven basis.”

The collaborative project, operating under the Club del Moko umbrella, has made considerable progress:

• Using molecular markers, Alvarez and her colleagues identified 68 strains of R. solanacearum bacteria. These were isolated from samples of plant tissues, soil, water, and insects with a view to establishing the pathogen’s genetic diversity. CIAT collaborated with CORPOICA to study the genetic diversity of the pathogen in Colombia’s Eastern Plains (Llanos Orientales). However, being able to detect the bacteria not only under lab conditions but also on-farm is essential. Accurate on-farm diagnostic tools were given priority in the next stage of research.
• In Quindío about 50 farmers have been building, testing, using, and in some instances adapting the FEDEPLATANO composter design. Apart from the cost of materials (roughly US$75) to shelter the 20-square-meter composting area and collect the rachis lixivium, the main farmer investment is labor. FEDEPLATANO supplies farmers with a small quantity of compost starter, a liquid inoculum developed by González

Local benefits, global recognition

To date, Club del Moko have provided four major benefits to farmers. First, disease-control methods now cover 4,000 hectares in Quindí, dramatically reducing disease incidence and crop losses. Second, local plantain growers have made the rural environment safer by eliminating the use of Formol (formaldehyde) and other chemical pesticides. Third, reduced reliance on agrochemicals has helped farmers cut their production costs. Finally, the Club has enhanced local capacity for rural learning and innovation with more than 1,000 farmers participating in the research and technology validation work, and several thousand more farmers and agricultural technicians were trained in moko control.

CGIAR News thanks Gerry Toomey, Science Writer, Green Ink Publishing Services Ltd., UK, for contributing this story.