By Jim Stipe
Catholic Relief Services is joining 18 other international scientific and development organizations in committing to fight the spread of Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) and Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD), both major threats to one of Africa’s staple crops.
Cassava is an inexpensive and essential part of the daily diet of many Africans. The effects of these plant diseases are potentially catastrophic, threatenting the food security of 135 million people in East Africa alone, and upward of 300 million cassava consumers across the continent.
CRS participated in a gathering of the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century in Bellagio, Italy last month and helped to formulate the group’s plan for taking immediate, medium and long term actions against these crop diseases. “If these measures are applied very quickly, we believe that the spread of CBSD can be contained to East Africa, that the impact of CMD can be substantially decreased, and that the risk of the spread of the diseases to the rest of the world could be dramatically reduced,” the group’s final statement said.
The group’s statement urged quick and decisive action to avert potentially devastating consequences.
Both diseases are caused by viruses and transmitted by small insects called whiteflies. New, “super-abundant” whiteflies have emerged in Uganda, spreading south and west, and are now present as far south as Zambia and as far west as Cameroon.
The diseases are also spread by the movement of cuttings taken from infected plants. The increasing international movement of these cuttings could enable the diseases to spread further across the continent and, possibly, to the rest of the cassava-producing world.
If CBSD reaches Nigeria – the world’s biggest producer and consumer of cassava – it will cause a human catastrophe of unforeseen magnitude; if it reaches Thailand or India it will jeopardize economic sectors worth several billion dollars a year.