On NH27, the two-lane span of highway from Lucknow to Barabanki is thick with unruly trucks making their way through the smog into what is essentially sweet country. Sugar mills and fields of cane regularly dot the passing landscape. Also at hand is a less sweet cousin, filling plantations that sprawl for acre after acre in eye-popping green. Banana, that rich source of potassium and phallic wit, is one of the major crops of this area—as it is in Bihar and Maharashtra, and a lot of south India. The jovial fruit is, however, attracting more than humour these days.
The news, in fact, is a little grave—and is not being much talked about officially so as not to cause a scare. Along with the commercially viable banana varieties from the West, India seems to have imported a debilitating fungal infection. It’s ruining not just the crop, but the soil itself. And the farmers don’t know that yet.
Mineet Mishra, a 28-year-old farmer, has about an acre where he predominantly grows the Grand Nain strain, source of the commercial Cavendish bananas, aside from wheat on the side. He turns away and chuckles when fungus is mentioned, and asks a helper to cut down a plant. Just a few hacks later, the tree succumbs—as if it’s almost willing to fall—and reveals the rotting inside of the stem. “We’ve seen some plants in nearby fields fall with just one push. Anti-fungal medicines don’t work on this,” Mishra tells Outlook.
It wasn’t just one. The men went ahead and chopped down several plants they knew were susceptible, from the last batch awaiting harvest. All were in varying stages of decay. His fields hold about 1,500 banana plants, and Mishra says, “Between 12 and 14 out of every batch of 100–150 plants have rotted this year.” Signs of the fungal attack cropped up some two years ago, and the rot has just become deeper.