Simple technology supporting farmers to revive banana production in Burundi

Beatrice Bukuru, a member of the 'Tugurukire Kitoki' farmers group

in the group's communal land during a field day 

Beatrice Bukuru, 50, from Kassa village in Muyinga commune, Burundi, is a happy woman. She wasn't so happy three years ago. A deadly strange disease was ravaging her banana, threatening her ability to earn a living and feed her family.  Today, she is even the proud owner of two goats, bought through sales from the crop. 

So what has changed in three years?  Well, she joined a farmers group called 'Tugurukire kitoki' (rehabilitate banana) that has transformed the farming of this important food and staple crop in the region. 

She says the group started when the president of the group came back from training with a few banana plantlets of this new variety that is very high yielding. He also introduced a new technology of rapidly multiplying planting materials which are disease free so the new varieties could be quickly distributed to the other farmers. 

Usually, Beatrice and other small-holder banana farmers plant suckers, - the little banana plantlets growing at the side of the mother plant either from their own existing banana plants or borrowed from a neighbor. This is not only slow, as a plant can only produce about four to five suckers in a year, it also transfers pests and diseases from one farm to another.

However, with the new way of multiplying planting material, known as macro-propagation, a healthy sucker is cut into small pieces which are carefully planted in a nursery and when they are big enough, are transferred to the farms. One sucker if well prepared can produce up to 50 plantlets in three months.

The training on macro-propagation and on improved methods of growing banana were conducted by  a team from the  International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) working under an umbrella initiative that brings together many development partners to support the agricultural sector by the name Consortium for Improving Agriculture-based Livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA).  

They are a part of on-going efforts to control the spread of diseases and pest and in particular, the banana wilt and banana bunchy top disease which are spreading rapidly and destroying banana in the great Lakes region. All banana varieties are susceptible to the two diseases hence the need for concerted efforts by all.

According to Emmanuel Njukwe, the partnership associate scientist with IITA, banana is a key staple in Burundi for food and income the diseases were therefore a big threat to the already food insecure country which has a high population density. The diseases are spread by infected planting material, use of infected farming equipment, browsing animals and insects.

One way of getting disease free planting material is the use of tissue culture. However, according to Emmanuel, the farmers did not like the tissue culture bananas much which are small, delicate and require a lot of care. So they turned to macro-propagation and also developed the concept of ‘mother gardens’.

Demonstrating the banana macropropagation technology

during a field day

"We trained the farmers how to treat the suckers by placing them in boiling water for 30 seconds to get rid of pests such as nematodes and weevils. They then remove the sheath to expose the buds and meristem, the growing part of the plantlet, which they cut into small pieces. these are then grown in a nursery whose substrate has also been sterilized to get rid of pests," he said.  "We also help them with testing the mother plant to ensure they are virus free so they do not unknowingly spread the viruses."

The project has also been screening different banana varieties to identify those that can perform well under the local conditions and also meet farmers' preferences.  One such variety is the FHIA variety from and named after the Honduran Agricultural Research Foundation which is Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola (FHIA) in Spanish.

Tugurukire kitoki group has a collective farm where they are growing the new varieties FHIA and other local varieties with macro-propagation, they are able to plant all the banana at the same time and when they are ready for harvesting, call the buyers who come with lorries to collect.  Before the banana were planted with suckers of varying age and size at different times and got ready at interval.

They have opened a collective bank account to save the money from the sale of banana from their collective farm. They use it to pay school feeds for children, buy medicine and cater for other emergencies. The group has also been buying goats for the members to diversify their income and recently Beatrice got two.

Hubert Chauvet, the Country Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) one of the institutions working in Burundi to tackle the banana disease says the macro-propagation technology is cheap and simple enough for farmers to do it themselves. 

He said FAO had supported CIALCA and national partners in the first phase of coping with the banana wilt disease which involved creating awareness to farmers about the disease and control measures which included uprooting and destroying affected banana plants to halt the spread.

 "Now with macro-propagation, farmers are getting planting material fast and the disease situation is now slowly getting under control," he said.



Felix talks to journalists

The Tugurukire kitoki group is supporting other farmers in other parts of the country to embrace this new technology. One such group is Collectif des associations de development dans la commune Kibage (CADRE),  which is an association of 29 farmers. According to their vice president, Kanyakiro Felix, they have also started banana macro-propagation and so far they have four nurseries, multiplying 120 banana suckers of the FHIA variety. The group wants to increase to 6000 suckers and each group in the association to establish their own nursery.

Kanyakiro says with this technology and the training received on how to properly grow banana such as mulching and spacing, their banana production is starting to recover. "We did not have banana. They were destroyed by the disease. We are slowly recovering. And we now even want to go into juice processing."

Njukwe says the project has been very successful due to support from many farmers and the government as well and can be easily replicated to many parts of Africa where the two diseases are spreading rapidly. 

IITA trains on banana production techniques and pest management in Burundi

Workshop participants posing with their certificates at the end of the five-day training on banana production techniques and Integrated Pest Management (IPM)

IITA conducted a training on banana production techniques and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in Burundi as part of its on-going efforts to boost production of this key staple crop through technology transfer and technical backstopping to the Programme Post conflit de Development Rural (PPCDR)  project that is funded by the European Union (EU).  

The training, held from the 11th to 15th June 2012  in Ruyigi, Burundi, attracted 39 participants drawn from the zonal animators of PPCDR, farmers' associations, the Agriculture ministry MINAGRIE (Ministere de l'Agriculture et de l'Elevage), seed production centers and extension officers from Cankuzo, Kirundo, Rutana, Ruyigi and Muyinga provinces.

The training had six modules: banana morphology, the economic importance of banana, banana production systems, banana management practices and IPM, rapid and healthy banana planting material production methods and banana field data collection.

During the training, the participants were grouped in their respective provinces and they developed proposals on sustainable approaches to control banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) and banana bunchy top disease (BBTD).

The training ended with a field visit to identify banana pests, diseases and nutrients deficiency symptoms in surrounding farmer's fields. It was facilitated by Sylvestre Hakizimana of IITA with technical support from Emmanuel Njukwe, the IITA project manager.

Emmanuel Njukwe, the IITA project manager said the participants now had the technical know-how to manage banana mother gardens established in their respective provinces and macro-propagation units which will be installed in each site to rapidly produce clean banana planting material for farmers to stop the spread of the two deadly diseases, BXW and BBTD.

Work smart not hard - Boosting productivity of small-holder farmers through smarter farming practices

A man and his wife who are small-holder farmers, display their harvest of cassava and banana, two important staples in Sub-Sahara Africa. 

They have small farms, big families and few animals. They grow different types of crops to spread their risks and lack resources to invest in inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides to boost their production. They are at the mercy of the weather; when it rains their harvest is abundant, when it fails, their granaries are empty and they sometimes require food aid.

These are the small-holder farmers in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda that Dr. Piet Van Asten, a system's agronomist with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is trying to work with to ensure they get the most out of what they have. However, they represent a majority of small-holder farmers in Africa.
He works for the Consortium for improving agriculture based livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA) which brings together many partners to improve the livelihoods of small-holder farmers. IITA is one of the founding partners.

Too many challenges, where does one start? According to Van Asten, the starting point to improve the productivity of their farming systems is to understand their constraints and to try and identify the one or two issues that if tackled can have great positive impact. He says using tools such as yield gap analysis which looks at the actual productivity of the small holders farmers against the maximum yield they can get in the same circumstances, they have been able to make some headway.

Poor old soils

Dr Piet Van Asten, IITA systems agronomist. 

Van Asten says, focusing primarily on banana, they have established that poor soils are one of the most important constraints to the crop's production by the small-holder farmers in the three countries. Most soils, he said, were old, from old parent rocks and had very little nutrients left.


It therefore follows logically that supporting the farmers to use inputs such as fertilizer was one of the best-bet technologies to increase their production. However, Van Asten cautions, this must be applied based on the actual soil deficiency and include factors such as distance from the farms to market and banana prices.

"Investing in fertilizer does not always lead to profits for the farmers. They can only get value for their money if they live near markets or infrastructure is good and they are able to fetch good prices for their banana. They must also know which nutrients their soils are lacking and which are important for the crops they are growing. They should not follow blanket recommendations as is always the case," he said.

For example he said, they established that potassium, which plays a big role in banana production, was lacking in most soils in the three countries. Yet, the addition of the mineral led to great gains in banana production. Furthermore, Van Asten said, the banana plants that received adequate potassium fared better in times of drought.

He says the impact of adding nutrients to the soils was visible even at the farm level where bananas growing near the homesteads were healthier than those further down.

"This is because the soil closer to the homestead benefited from kitchen wastes as women tend not to walk far to throw away the rubbish. For example, ashes from the fire add calcium to the soils, "he said. "Food wastes add organic matter."

Banana growing near a homestead where the soil is often more fertile from kitchen waste 

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Which crops give the highest returns?

Most African farmers practice mixed farming. The question therefore arises, with the little limited resources at their disposal, which crop would give them the highest return from fertilizer application and how do they make these decisions?

Van Asten says according to a scooping study they carried out in the three countries, they were surprised to discover that farmers would get the highest return from coffee, cassava and banana and not maize and beans which they gave preference.

"Coffee, banana and even cassava in the long run proved to be better value for money invested in fertilizer in terms of replenishing nutrient extracted in the soils and returns per dollar invested. However, farmers only see the immediate gains in maize and beans.

"Farmers still have to make the decision carefully because for example, once they start fertilizing their coffee it would be best if they can continue. If they stop, the coffee can't maintain its canopy and yields and will show some die-back. This fuels farmers' belief that fertilizer is bad and spoils soils," he said.

Coffee and banana - super mix

Coffee and banana intercrop. 

Other practices that were found to increase yield include inter-cropping banana and coffee. Piet says the farmers got more out of their land by growing the two crops together than having either of them alone. These findings he said are slowing leading to a change of hearts among policy makers who have for a long time preached mono-cropping of coffee in Rwanda and Burundi. This is because coffee is an import foreign exchange earner and they did not want anything to affect its production.

He said their research was not inventing anything new. Rather it was based on finding out what the best farmers were doing to get their good yields and helping the others to adopt them.

"Some of the best banana farmers get as much as 40 tons per hectare. We try to understand what they are doing and why, and then promote it to wider farmers in the community and even further," he said.

However, he says they don't always agree with the farmers views. For example, most farmers judge the productivity of their banana by the size of the bunches.

"To us, this is not the best indicator. We instead look at productivity per hectare. A farmer may have smaller bunches but more plants therefore his overall productivity is higher than the one with huge bunches but fewer plants. We therefore have been working with them to plant as many bananas as their land can accommodate based on its soil fertility, rainfall, among others" he said.

Piet says under CIALCA they have mapped most of the soils in the three countries and developed fertilizer usage recommendations that are region specific. They have also developed and are disseminating the rich information gathered on various ways that small-holder farmers can increase banana production. The crop is among their most important food and cash crop in the three countries but its productivity is very low.