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Bunchy top of bananas in Australia Bunchy top disease threatened the banana industry in Australia in the l92Os. The virus that causes bunchy top is thought to have been introduced from Fiji in infected suckers in 1913. In Lg22 banana production in New South Wales was 433,OOO cases from about 2,226 hectares. In 1925 production had fallen to 60,000 cases and the area planted to bananas had fallen to 607 hectares due to the effects of bunchy top. It was not until the means of spread of the virus was established that the banana industry recovered. The virus was shown to be transmitted in infected planting material and by the banana aphid. In 1927, government legislation was passed that quarantined certain areas where the disease occurred and restricted movement of banana plants from these areas. This prevented the spread of the disease to new areas. This, combined with the destruction of diseased plants, enabled the banana industry to recover from the effects of the bunchy top epidemic. Source: PLANT PATHOLOGY: AN OVERVIEW John Brown www.appsnet.org/Publications/Brown_Ogle/01%20Plant%20Path...(JFB).pdf

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Typically, a multi-stemmed shrub to 3 m tall, bearing a lignotuber. It grows mostly north of Sydney on the central and north coast subdivisions, extending onto the central and northern tablelands. It is widespread in heath and dry sclerophyll forest and woodland, usually on sandy soils and sandstone outcrops but may also occur on other soil types. The leaves are alternate, linear to oblanceolate, to 10 cm long and only 1 cm wide, green to dark green in colour and are toothed uniformly for most of their length. The lower surface is paler and hairy. The inflorescences of banksias are generally referred to as spikes or a spike-like structure that consists of fused racemes of paired flowers (hence it gets referred to as a conflorescence). There can be 100s of flowers in each spike. The flowers of banksias have 4 tepals (petals or sepals) in a tubular formation, 4 anthers hidden inside, and an elongated carpel (female part) where the style and extends outwards forming the edge of the spike (somewhat similar to individual grevillea and hakea flowers). In this species, the spikes are generally 15 cm long (sometimes longer) and about 6 cm wide, with each flower thin but up to 3 cm long, orange to yellow-orange in colour. The styles (female part of the flower) can be a vivid dark red to purple-black and hooked at the apex (very similar to B. spinulosa). The spike then turns into a cone-like structure of follicles; a fruit that splits open on one side. Each follicle has one or two-winged seeds which is actually a fruit in itself called a samara. The follicles can take a long time to mature and open, usually needing a fire. Each “cone” can produce a fair amount of seed with this species having up to 100 follicles per “cone”, each up to 25 mm long. Source: resources.austplants.com.au/plant/banksia-collina/

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