Researchers at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture IITA in Tanzania have announced that the organization is currently working to develop a banana resistant to the Banana Bunchy Top Virus and Disease.

The effort is part of the organization's “Combating banana bunchy top virus in East Africa" project, led by IITA with the support of the United States Department of Agriculture – Foreign Agricultural Services (USDA-FAS).

The project was created to develop a harmonized regional strategy for combating BBTV, support a regional BBTV technical working group, create stakeholders’ awareness, organize delimitation surveys, and strengthen BBTV detection and disease control capacity.

BBTV is one of the most destructive banana diseases in the world and mainly affects bananas in countries such as Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The disease is transmitted by the banana aphid and can lead to yield losses of 70 to 90% in the first season, with subsequent seasons seeing no bananas produced.

IITA scientist Happyness Mpanda said to The Citizen that "the research institute launched a research initiative to breed BBTV-resistant banana seedlings, which have been sent to Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for screening to determine their resistance to the virus." 

She also added that 72 banana varieties from the parental breeding program are undergoing screening for BBVT resistance and, if any of them is so, they will be tested in experimental trials on farms in the DRC. 

The virus was confirmed in the country in 2024 in Tanzania and Uganda and has rapidly spread to previously unaffected areas in East Africa.