Dole Food and Elo Life to develop fungal disease-resistant bananas

Fresh fruit and vegetable producer Dole Food Company has partnered with Elo Life Systems to develop a wide range of banana varieties with a resistance to the Fusarium wilt fungal disease.

The two companies will focus on developing banana varieties, including Cavendish.

Caused by the Tropical Race 4 (TR4) strain of a plant pathogenic fungus called Fusarium, Fusarium wilt threatens the continued cultivation of bananas.

It was detected in Colombia last year and is expected to spread throughout Latin America.

Elo Life Systems CEO Fayaz Khazi said: “Spread of Fusarium wilt would not only have devastating consequences to the banana industry but also have a significant economic impact on farmers in the affected regions whose livelihoods depend on exports of the Cavendish banana.

“To date, chemical and cultural approaches to control this disease have been unsuccessful. We’re excited to work with Dole, which shares Elo’s vision to improve the security and sustainability of the global food supply, to address this critical need and help develop new varieties that leverage natural resistance within several relatives of the Cavendish banana.”

According to the partnership agreement, Elo will be engaged in the discovery and development of multiple approaches to ensure that the fruit develops resistance to Fusarium wilt.

Dole will conduct field evaluation and commercialisation of Fusarium TR4-resistant Cavendish varieties.

The company will also fund Elo’s research and development activities and pay royalties on the commercialised plant product.

For its research, Elo will use its suite of tools and end-to-end expertise in translational agriculture in combination with its homing endonuclease-based genome editing platform.

Dole Tropical Products Innovation R&D director Patricio Gutiérrez said: “Bananas are not only the most popular fruit in the United States, but together with plantains, they are a staple food on which much of the world depends for sustenance.

“Our investment in this strategic project reflects our aspiration to improve a critically important food crop while helping farmers meet the continuous challenges to produce this food for the planet.”

In December 2018, Dole Food agreed to divest its subsidiaries Saba Fresh Cuts and Saba Fresh Cuts to BAMA International.