Banana growing districts are losing key soil nutrients for bananas cultivation as farmers sell the crop in urban centres.
A study conducted in 2011 in Ntungamo District and parts of neighbouring Rwanda says the areas lose potassium nutrients whenever the banana crop and its leaves are taken to urban areas.
The researchers working in collaboration with International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) say this practice threatens future of small-holder farmers surviving on bananas for income.
Dr Piet van Asten, a systems agronomist at International Institute for Tropical Agriculture Country office in Uganda, says the findings of the research released on Monday are very significant and point to the already established fact that more and more soils in Uganda are becoming barren.
van Asten says increased tilling of land due to high population and demining the organic matter during transporting the crop for trade has left it with very little nutrients especially potassium.
//Cue in: “Whereas before you had your farm......
Cue out:......... you don’t have fertile soils.”//
Potassium nutrient plays a big part in banana cultivation because it increases disease resistance and improves fruit weight and number of fingers per bunch. The nutrient has been scientifically proven in stimulating earlier fruit shooting as well as shortening the number of days to maturity.
The study found that the amount of important minerals for plant growth in the soils in the study areas was low and the little fertility left was mostly due to the organic matter in the top soil.
It also indicates that, while banana is a very important crop for the region, providing food and income for over 85 percent of the population, the use of external inputs such as fertilizers was virtually non-existent.
Dr George William Bazirake, a scientist at Uganda Industrial Research Institute, says over 40 percent of the green banana crop is not of use to the end user in urban areas. Bazirake, who is working on a technology to have vacuum sealed bananas for sale, says the peeling would remain in farms as manure to enhance soil nutrients.
//Cue in: “What we do is that….
Cue out:..... enzymes.”//
The deactivation of the enzymes means removal of that part of banana responsible for ripening.
The findings of the study call for the usage of both organic and mineral fertilizers to improve the soils.
Dr. van Asten says farmers in Ntugamo and other banana producing areas can equally be informed on how to retain nutrients on the same land by planting more than one crop as well as using organic and inorganic fertilisers.
//Cue in: “We also try to look how.....
Cue out:.... or coffee mono cropping.”//
van Asten had earlier done a study estimating that the 100 trucks of banana bunches that reach Kampala everyday deplete 1.5 million kilograms of potassium (K) and half a million kilograms of magnesium (Mg) from the soils in the rural areas annually.
