A delegation from Republic of China (Taiwan) International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) is on a one week visit to Belize to implement a pilot project on satellite monitoring of banana plantations using state of the art technology. It is part of a regional project that Taiwan is funding in the region to strengthen the capacity of countries belonging to OIRSA, the International Regional Organization for Plant and Animal Health, in the detection, diagnosis, and capacity building to respond to a possible threat of banana wilt caused by the fungus.

Apart from being an important export industry, banana and plantain form part of the diet of the Belizean population and their cultivation provides a source of income; thus, their well- being is a food security issue.

OIRSA has as its priority to establish regional action plans and work with national authorities to minimize or prevent the introduction and impact (social, economic and environmental) of diseases and pests in the region. In this regard, OIRSA has joined forces with ICDF ROC (Taiwan) to assist its member countries in the implementation of this project. The delegation has visited the Belize Agricultural Health Authority’s (BAHA) diagnostic laboratory, to get first- hand information on what is needed to strengthen the diagnostic capacity of the BAHA laboratory.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise (MAFSE) in Central Farm will be a major player in the project and will work with germ-plasm materials and training of farmers in disease surveillance and implementation of biosecurity protocols in the event that the disease gets into the country. BAHA, as the competent authority will be present for all the project implementation phases and will be the leading agency in coordinating the activities along with OIRSA.

CEO Servulo Baeza of MAFSE supports this initiative enthusiastically as part of a national mandate to safeguard the food security of Belize. The experts have met with him to discuss their work and will meet with the Banana Growers Association to fine tune the monitoring technology and to discuss the three- year project strategy for a better and more efficient implementation.

Another component of the project will be trials for agricultural and productive adaptation of the tolerant or resistant varieties of the banana wilt fungus which will go along with the biosecurity protocols for movement of genetic materials and traceability. The team has met with personnel from the University of Belize (UB) to include them in the research component and tissue culture technology of the project.