Future bright for disease control in banana industry

Mr Rodda, chief pilot for Airborne Group Australia, spends 95 per cent of his time spraying bananas with fungicides and foliar fertilisers, and says when Bayer Crop Science introduced Luna® Privilege for control of leaf disease in 2015, it was welcomed by industry.

“Yellow Sigatoka is our most problematic disease, there’s also speckle and a couple of other smaller diseases, but mostly we’re targeting leaf spot, particularly yellow Sigatoka, which if left untreated will decimate a crop,” he says.

“So, when Luna Privilege came along in 2015, it gave farmers another option, and a good option because it had never been used before. It’s Group 7 fungicide mode of action represented a new chemical group and so everybody was excited.”

“The impact Luna Privilege has had where we have applied it for growers like Cameron Flegler has been good. When we have applied it once or twice on a block as part of a program for the season, the performance speaks for the effectiveness of the chemical.”

The willingness of some growers to embrace Luna Privilege is most telling when the recent fortunes of the banana industry are considered, with dry conditions and low prices taking a toll.

“In 2015, when Luna Privilege was introduced, our growers all planned to use it in their spray programs, however there wasn’t as much applied as we all thought there would be,” Mr Rodda says.

“I believe that was simply because drier wet seasons meant there hasn’t been high disease pressure, plus low banana prices mean farmers are watching every dollar.

“Growers are instead going to use their allocation of Luna Privilege when disease pressure is higher and they really need that powerful chemistry and new mode of action.”

Mr Rodda has also been happy with how the Luna Privilege stewardship program has worked, with guidelines designed to maximise the longevity of the chemistry.

“It’s been great, the way Bayer approached it in the beginning was very sensible, in that farmers had to nominate how many hectares they were going to spray with Luna Privilege, and they were only able to buy enough for that area,” he says.

“It means everyone’s on the same page in knowing exactly how many hectares are going to be sprayed, exactly how much chemical is out there, and it gets applied only at certain times.

“The future for Luna Privilege is very bright, given the stewardship program, and when a big wet season produces a high disease pressure situation, we’ll have Luna Privilege ready to go. I think we’ve got many effective years of Luna to come.”