The European Union has been demanding the main banana supplying countries for a couple of years to eliminate or reduce the maximum limits of chemical residues they normally use to control the incidence of certain diseases. Products such as chlorotalovil, chlorpyrifos and dichtrin that have normally served to stop the appearance of cochineal, thrips and the fearsome black sigatoka, have entered the prohibited list.
The situation is beginning to raise alarms in Ecuador, due to the difficulty that farmers are having in replacing a dozen chemicals that have been banned with more ecological ones. “Sigatoka is one of the diseases with the highest incidence in banana cultivation, if it is not controlled, the fruit cannot be cut because it runs the risk of ripening in transit,” explains Víctor Hugo Quimí, a technician specialized in bananas, who clarifies that, in this case, “it is not that there are no other molecules that can substitute chlorotalovil, but that the alternatives that exist are not economical.”
