General cropping context

World banana production is estimated at 140 millions tons (Odeadom, 2020). Two distinct products are involved: cooking bananas including plantains (42 million tons) on the one hand, and dessert type bananas (97.5 million tons) on the other hand, the best known of which is the Cavendish banana (80 million tons). Dessert bananas account for the totality of trade on the world market, estimated at around 22 million tons for the Cavendish variety, as opposed to barely a million tons exported for plantain bananas).

Everything on the dessert banana export market converges towards a supply chain focused on a single variety: a standardized and highly intensified production system with massive use of synthetic pesticides, a logistics process and standardized distribution, etc.

Pesticide reduction in banana

In these export-oriented systems, applications of pesticide products in several production areas reach extremely high levels (up to 60 kg/ha/year of active ingredient), which in no way meet sustainability requirements, while being detrimental to labourers, surrounding communities, consumers and the environment. These intensive systems are rapidly “losing steam” (fertility depletion, erosion, etc.) and there is a substantial drop in the effectiveness of a very large range of treatment products (e.g., systemic fungicides against banana Black Sigatoka). To this has be added the global spread of emerging diseases, such as banana TR4 Fusarium wilt, against which chemical treatment is ineffectual. Given this situation, calls for a change in practices are numerous and different in nature: local authorities in producing countries and those in importing countries, or zones (e.g. the EU), are issuing new standards on pesticide residues in imports (e.g., case of mancozeb) (de Lapeyre et al, 2011); NGOs and consumers, certain distributors and producers (e.g. Carrefour Quality Supply Chain) are advocating for a change targeting, first and foremost, a drastic reduction in pesticides.

The CIRAD Geco unit has been working for several decades on analysing and developing banana parasite control practices (intensive export banana system). Expertise has been developed in the French West Indies and in the Caribbean (primarily the Dominican Republic), in Africa (Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana and more recently Senegal). It is now being increasingly fine-tuned for the major central and South America region, notably thanks to analysis of sourcing requests for the major European distribution chains.

In response to societal demands, the toughening of regulations and health scandals (e.g., Chlordecone), CIRAD’s dessert banana research and R&D activity has developed a wide range of practices based on agroecology concepts aiming to reduce, replace, or even totally do away with synthetic pesticide use in export banana plantations. In that respect, the French West Indies are a laboratory for a change in practices, as the constraints there are so numerous and are accumulating. Sanitation fallow and use of in vitro plantlets, pest trapping, mechanical leaf removal, fungicide warning treatments, development of service plants, etc. have thus been developed with a very high TRL (transferred or transferrable). A comparison between the inventory of practices (previous point) and the available technical solutions makes it possible to plot progress pathways in the coming years for most production areas. On a highly standardized crop like export banana, a reduction of almost 50% in pesticide use can rapidly be achieved, notably by totally halting nematicide and insecticide use (Risède et al, 2018).