AN outbreak of the devastating lethal yellowing disease is threatening coconut palms across the island, spurring the Coconut Industry Board (CIB) to recommend that all infected plants be immediately cut down and burned.

"We have seen hot spots all over the island, but it is now showing up highly concentrated in the eastern parishes," said Edgar Watson, general manager of the Coconut Industry Board (CIB).

Once productive, swaying coconut palms now reduced to dead, stiff poles across the St Thomas hills. (Photos: Bryan Cummings)

A resurgence of lethal yellowing could wipe out the island's coconut palm population, killing an industry already under pressure from substitute oils and synthetic products.

"Lethal yellowing is the AIDS of the coconut industry, Dr Wayne Myrie, plant pathologist at the Board told the Sunday Observer. "We know no cure."

It is against this background that the CIB has suggested the cut-and-burn procedures to curtail the spread of the disease.

Over a thirteen-year period to 2007, approximately one million trees have been killed by lethal yellowing, leaving a direct loss of more than $480 million to the industry.

"Small farmers can't afford to lose that income," says Watson.

According the CIB, lethal yellowing decimated the industry in the early 1960s, and is again becoming prevalent in St Thomas, Portland and St Mary, the parishes responsible for the highest production of coconut in Jamaica.

The current outbreak has also affected coconut plants in Westmoreland and St James.

The devastating disease silently attacks the palms, leaving in its wake - within a year - only black topped stalks resembling telephone poles.
The first signs of lethal yellowing are premature nut fall, then a blackening of newly opened flower stalks, Myrie explained.

"There is then progressive yellowing or browning of leaves, and the last stage is the telephone pole effect," he adds.

Myrie suggested that the plant should ideally be cut down at the first stage.

"It is a culling procedure that is used with many other commodities," Watson said, adding that a similar approach was used some years ago when problems surfaced in the papaya industry.

"If we are able to control the spread through culling, then we can control the effects of the disease, he emphasised.

The CIB is also advocating the use of legumes as cover crop, and special attention given to soil fertility to reduce the possibility of infestation, which it said is caused by a bacteria spread by certain insects.

Coconut farmers over the years have always had to be vigilant against lethal yellowing which may appear under control for years before resurging at a rapid rate.

Many small farmers, however, have become increasingly uneasy with
the repeated burning of crops, contending that it considerably extends the reaping time and reduces the production of nuts per farm.

Long time farmer Michael Black, while empathising with the plight of small farmers, said he had applied the cut-and-burn technique since he started his farm thirty-five years ago and has had no ill effects.
Lethal yellowing is absent from his property, covering some 600 acres with approximately 60,000 palms in the Nutts River section of St Thomas.

"All the workers are sensitised to lethal yellowing," he said "If we see what we think is the first sign, the tree is destroyed".

He said that since 1992 he has culled about 700 trees suspected to have the lethal yellowing disease.

"I do not wait," Black told the Sunday Observer. "When in doubt, I cut it out."

Not far away at Chiquita farm near Golden Grove its a completely different story. The 250-acre plantation has lost all of its approximately 30,000 coconut palms, showing stark evidence of the destructive disease. Bright yellow leaves of dying plants intermix the tall bare stalks covering the hillside for miles.

Caretaker Vayne McCalla painted a gloomy picture as she related how the disease reduced the once vibrant farm and sent workers seeking other means of survival.

"Everything just died off in little over a year," she said. "We have lost everything. There is nothing, everything gone, gone, gone," she lamented.

"We used to supply the copra factory, but that closed down and now we don't even have any jelly (coconut) to sell," McCalla continued
Even while grappling with lethal yellowing, the local coconut industry has also had to reposition, resulting from strong competition and changes in taste.

Copra, the dried coconut kernel, lost its marketability long ago after coconut oil got a bad rap in health circles.

Coconut oil, for years, came under scrutiny and what Black says is misinformation, and has progressively been substituted because of its reported high cholesterol content.

The industry had to withstand the onslaught of market forces that saw its primary product being replaced on the shelves by soybean and vegetable oils.

Genetic engineering of rapseed in the US to produce oils, similar to those found in coconut, has also cut a huge swath out of the industry, said CIB research director Basil Been.

"In the 1970s, 30 per cent of the oils came from coconut. Now it is down to approximately three per cent," Been said.

But the CIB research head was quick to point out that products from the coconut palm were wide and varied, thus securing it as viable crop worldwide.

Coconut water, he said, is now the primary product locally.
"I hail the jelly coconut man," Black told the Sunday Observer. "It is the jelly coconut water that kept up the industry when oil got a beating," he said.

Problems with lethal yellowing go back more than 100 years in the Caribbean. It was discovered in Cayman Islands in 1834 and fifty years later showed up in the western end of Jamaica.

The first major outbreak occurred in 1961; the first case being in Buff Bay before afflicting the major coconut growing parishes in the eastern end of the island.

More than eight million palms were destroyed during that out break, Been said.

Then in the 1970s, research led to the introduction of the Malayan Dwarf, and later a local hybrid named Maypan, both of which were believed to be resistance to the disease.

However, after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, plants including the Malayan dwarf, again displayed symptoms of the disease.

Been told the Sunday Observer that before Hurricane Gilbert Jamaica was the only country from which Florida accepted coconut palms, attesting to the level of research and control being done in the island.

In spite of the constant threat, the local industry has been able to survive because of continuous research work conducted by the CIB in conjunction with overseas organisations, according to Been.