Panama disease Panama disease Panama disease is a plant disease of the roots of banana plants. It is a type of fusarium wilt, caused by the fungal pathogen "Fusarium oxysporum" f. sp." cubense" (Foc). The pathogen is resistant to fungicide and cannot be controlled chemically. During the 1950s, Panama disease wiped out most commercial Gros Michel banana production. The Gros Michel banana was the dominant cultivar of bananas, and the blight inflicted enormous costs and forced producers to switch to other, disease-resistant cultivars. New strains of Panama disease currently threaten the production of today's most popular cultivar, Cavendish. Two external symptoms help
Crop scouting Crop scouting Crop scouting is the process of precisely assessing pest pressure (typically insects) and crop performance to evaluate economic risk from pest infestations and disease, as well as to determine the potential effectiveness of pest and disease control interventions. Scouting is usually sold as a commercial service to farmers as part of Integrated pest management. New tools are available to increase the effectiveness of crop scouting, including specialized field instruments and handheld computers with GPS, enabling geotagging of crop problems. There exists a new generation of crop scouting systems that enables growers and crop consultants to precisely and accurately