July 2009. A request for information on Blood bacterial wilt. Has a variety called Pisang Puju – budless cooking banana – survived epidemics in Indonesia? Or is this the same as Pisang Kepok?

A member replied: Ivan Buddenhagen’s paper in Blood Bacterial Wilt of Banana: History, Field Biology and Solution in ISHS Acta Horticulturae 828, states that this banana disease is epidemic on ABB/BBB cooking bananas like Pisang Kepok. The paper goes on to state that a budless mutant of P Kepok was discovered in Sulawesi in 1992 and that this budless mutant produces healthy fruit in areas where the disease is endemic. The last sentence of the abstract: “A project is being started to propagate budless P Kepok in tissue culture on a large scale for distribution to farmers.”

Pisang Kepok is highly susceptible to Blood bacterial wilt; only the budless mutant is resistant in accord with all else that is known about insect transmission of Moko bacterial wilt on Bluggoe banana and its control in Central America.