BAHA Trains on Banana Disease Prevention in Belize

The Belize Agricultural Health Authority, BAHA, along with OIRSA and Taiwan I.C.D.F., is hosting a four-day workshop in Central Farm as part of a pilot project that Taiwan is funding with its allies in Central America, to strengthen banana disease prevention capacity. Francisco Gutierrez is the Technical Director of Plant Health at BAHA.

Francisco Gutierrez

Francisco Gutierrez, Technical Director, Plant Health, BAHA

“We are conducting this training with the support of Taiwan and OIRSA under an expert from Guatemala to develop technical capacities to be able to detect Fusarium Tropical Race 4 which is a pest of quarantine importance.  I want to say that it’s not a pest presently in Belize but it is being reported on the American continent, Colombia and Peru and we are concerned that it can be potentially accidentally introduced into the country, hence the reason that we want to develop as part of several initiatives for prevention, develop several capacities for testing using molecular techniques, PCR-based methodologies.”

Reporter

“So this is more of a prevention step.”

Francisco Gutierrez

“Yes, it‘s part of a preventative platform.  You need to be able to have the diagnostic capacity in case there is a suspect scenario then you can quickly react. Hopefully, being able to detect a very incipient or initial introduction so that you can move to try to contain or to eradicate.”