The main disease affecting ginger production in Jamaica is Ginger Rhizome Rot (GRR), which kills the plants it infects. Caused by fungi, bacteria and worms, the disease leads to rot inside the plant and turns its leaves yellow, as they wilt and die. The prevalence of GRR disease has resulted in over 60 per cent of yield losses in major ginger producing areas of Jamaica.
“Rhizome rot is spread unintentionally using infected seeds from the previous crop, which may appear normal and healthy,” said Ryan Francis, Team Leader in the Biotechnology Department at the Scientific Research Council (SRC) in the capital Kingston. “It may be spread also through soil, irrigation water and rain splash to adjacent plants.” Rhizome rot can survive in the soil for an extended period of time and can easily be transferred from one location to another, he added.
Experts from the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture have been working with scientists at the SRC to develop high-quality ginger varieties tolerant to GRR disease. To date, over 120 lines of ginger plantlets – young or small plants – have been developed and are under screening for improved traits. New ginger varieties developed from irradiated plant material in tissue culture have shown high levels of tolerance to the disease in a laboratory-based screening protocol that was applied with technical guidance from the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre.
Those tolerant mutant lines have been selected for further assessment under field conditions (see What is plant mutation breeding?). Plant regeneration using tissue culture and irradiation were undertaken at the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre with the participation of Francis, who was trained on the technique at the same time. This has effectively proven that mutation induction through calibrated radiation combined with tissue culture is an effective way for improving vegetative crops like ginger. It is expected that newly improved mutant varieties of ginger could be available in three to four years, much sooner than with other breeding methods, which typically take more than double or triple that amount of time to yield new varieties.
“This project will increase the availability of high-quality ginger in Jamaica, which will meet the expectations of our farmers and work towards stabilizing the production of ginger for local consumption and export,” said Shishca Higgins, Molecular Biologist at the SRC.
