Cassava diseases threaten to eliminate the crop in Kilosa

Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD)

Eighty per cent of cassava crop in Kilosa district, Morogoro region is in the verge of disappearing following severe attack from cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) which threatens its existence in the district.


Briefing reporters and Kilosa farmers over the weekend in Kilosa on the diseases, the agricultural officer for a national network of community groups involved in participatory forest management (MJUMITA), Ernest Jerome, said that the rate at which the viruses of the two diseases spreading was shocking and needed the government to take serious measures to arrest the situation.

He said that if the speed of the diseases attack on the crop is left unchecked, the crop may disappear completely in the district by 2015.

He said government must do something to rescue the situation because cassava was the only important crop for both food security and income generation for low income people in the district.

He said many farmers were ignorant of the diseases; as such they would leave the already infected plant to spread the viruses without taking proper measures.
“As one of the Agricultural stakeholder, I have a duty to caution the people especially farmers and the government to take appropriate measures to arrest the diseases,” he said.

He said there was a need to educate farmers on climate change which partly contributes to the spread of the diseases.

He said that if the crop disappears, hungry farmers would opt cutting down trees in the nearby forests to earn income and other essential needs such as food.
One of the farmers in Kisongwe village, Lumbiji ward, Octavia Joseph said that the diseases have severely damaged her farm causing severe rotting of cassava root and wrinkled leaves.

“We are used to eating cassava leaves as vegetables but since the appearance of the diseases, we have stopped eating because they are unfit to eat due to bitterness,” she said. 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN