Good to see CABI reacting to a slew of recent press reports on Cassava Brown Streak Disease in East Africa with a blog post summarizing what they and others have been doing about that very worrying problem lately. Interesting also that the best they can do as far as linking to what the CGIAR is doing is an IITA story from 2010, though they do nick IITA’s photo. I couldn’t find any reaction from the CGIAR on the CBSD story, which is surprising because the FAO press release which seems to have sparked the whole thing off does mention new IITA varieties that could help solve the problem. The best the CG seems to have been able to produce is a tweet and a blog post referring to a rapid multiplication technique which quoted an IITA video from 2009. Relevant, yes, but neither the tweet nor the post refers to the FAO story. Why is the CG not getting involved in this discussion more actively? What am I missing?
There is probably more going on, we just don’t know about it. One key question is whether genebanks have been thouroughly screened for CBSD resistence… In theory, CG reform should be able to tackle a problem like this more efficiently. The roots and tuber program should be promoting more interaction between IITA and CIAT, interaction that would bring together the researchers mostly closely working on CBSD with others that might have solutions… maybe someone who know more about this can comment. See these links from a recent paper on cassava pests and diseases:
http://dapa.ciat.cgiar.org/cbsd-maps/
http://dapa.ciat.cgiar.org/threats-to-cassava-production-potential-pest-distributions-amenazas-a-la-produccion-de-yuca-distribucion-potencial-de-plagas/
The first report I read on this seemed to suggest that Cassava Brown Streak is a newly discovered disease. This is far from the case as it was first reported in Tanzania in 1935. In 2002 DFID funded a conference on the disease and a copy can be found at:
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/SearchResearchDatabase.asp?OutPutId=56865
The latest work on the disease was originally pioneered by NRI in the 1990s and then taken forward by IITA who have developed their experise in this area. They have taken the work forward through initiatives such as the Great Lakes Cassava Initiative.
I am afraid that my relationship with the disease stopped in 2005 but I feel the articles should focus more on the nature of this outbreak – how is the new variant different and what are the implications. Otherwise the story sounds a bit as though a new story is being squeezed out of an old story. This might be why IITA have not responded so far?