Uganda approved planting of seven strains of the robusta bean that are resistant to coffee-wilt, the country’s Coffee Development Authority said.
Sixteen independent farmers are joining the Kawanda Research Institute in producing the beans, the authority said today in an e-mail from the capital, Kampala. It didn’t give its planting targets for the new strains.
Coffee wilt disease, a fungus that predominantly affects the robusta variety, was first detected in Uganda in 1993 and has destroyed about 150 million trees, according to the authority, which oversees the industry. Most were replaced through a replanting program that started in 1994, authority spokesman David Kiwanuka said today by phone.
The disease cost Uganda an estimated $500 million over the past 10 years, according to the website of CABI International, a not-for-profit development organization. Output by smallholders in the East African country has halved because of the fungus, the Wallingford, England-based group said.
Uganda is Africa’s biggest producer of robusta beans, with the variety accounting for 85 percent of total exports. Ugandan coffee production dropped to 2.7 million 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags last season, from more than 4 million bags in 1996-97, partly due to the effects of the disease, according to the development authority. Uganda’s replanting program aims to boost production to 4.5 million bags by 2015, the UCDA has said.
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