CONCLUSIONS
The BXW pandemic in the Great Lakes region of east and central Africa has
threatened the livelihoods of people who depend on banana. The pathogen kills plants
quickly and spreads rapidly over a large area in a short time, making the disease one of
the most dreaded in banana.
The bacterial diseases are difficult to control. No effective chemicals are available
to control bacterial diseases. Use of antibiotics is not recommended. Developing host
plant of resistant cultivars has been the best and most cost-effective method of managing
bacterial diseases. One approach to control bacterial disease is to improve a plant defense
against a particular pathogen through transgenic technologies.
Our results confirm that expression of the sweet pepper Hrap or Pflp gene in
transgenic banana leads to enhanced resistance to BXW. Transgenic bananas expressing
these genes appear to have significant potential to overcome the BXW pandemic, which
will boost the available arsenal to fight this epidemic disease and save livelihoods in
Africa. This technology may also provide effective control to other bacterial diseases such
as moko or blood disease, of banana occurring in other parts of the world. The elicitorinduced resistance could be a very useful strategy for developing broad-spectrum
resistance. The transgenic bananas carrying these genes may also display resistance to
fungal diseases like Black Sigatoka and Fusarium wilt. Yip et al. (2011) reported that the
Pflp transgenic banana exhibited resistance to Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense tropical
race 4.