Soysoap Is Testing on Bananas as we did in Ecudador and Phillipines
Caribbean Agriculture Solutions, Saint Lucia
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Another trial of Soysoap, this time it's Banana.
Sales: Okay, hi guys. Once again, we are here with another trial of Soysoap, this time it's banana. It's a banana plantation and there is a very troubling situation going on in Saint Lucia. And that's a troubling situation, it's called Black Sigatoka, I think I am pronouncing that correctly. But let me just - instead of telling you what it is, I am actually going to show you exactly what it does. Black Sigatoka basically sucks the life out of the plant. It actually sucks the green part from the leaves and as a result, you have something like this, okay?
Sales: So if you turn the leaves, you can see they usually sit on the back of the leaves and they actually just suck the life out of the leaves. And obviously, if the plant has no chlorophyll, it cannot produce - I mean, if you have dead plants, you obviously have a dead tree. And as you can see, these - all of - each and every plant, it has one of those leaves, okay? So it's going to move from this leaf and then it's going to move up the chain and eventually kill the entire tree.
Sales: So what we are doing here with Soysoap, is we were spraying even basically turning these plants into healthy plants, making them much more resistant to these deadly, wow, look at this, let me see if we can see, oh, here is the culprit right here, look at this. So these little guys are going to suck the life out of the plant and soon this leaf is going to turn to something like look at this guy here, okay? What we are doing right now is hopefully by applying Soysoap on those plants, we're going to have a much healthier plant.
Sales: Okay, so what I am going to do, we will be spraying in a minute, is getting a little bit dark, but we are going to be spraying a small portion of this huge plantation as you can see. Once again we want to thank - thanks to the farmer, Mr. Suraj who actually given us access to I think that's about 8 acres of bananas right here. And all right, so what I am going to do in about 14 days, between about 10 to 14 days, I am going to get back in touch with you to see if we were able to help these plants grow in such a way without using any toxic chemical.
Sales: All right, we're going to see again in about 10 to 14 days.
Black Sigatoka Joint Venture Started in Ecuador (Private Label Soysoap B-100) & Philippines (Private Label Soysoap 1)5 Years: Bananas Black Sigatoka CMV (Cucumber Mosaic Virus), Moko, and Erwinia Controlled and other Bacterial, Viral and Fungi Diseases List below with Soysoap B-100/Soysoap 1. We privately financed at over $300,000 the cost to control for Banana Diseases, and now our goal is to bring Soysoap B-100 to the Caribbean. We will have to go through the Pesticide application process with Soysoap like we did with "Soysoap 1" private label for Panama, same as Soysoap for each Caribbean & Central American country, Below is the Sustainable Organic Pesticide License. The also have an Panama Sustainable Organic Fertilizer License
Bananas and Get Well with Soysoap B-100, These are the diseases that are killing production of Bananas:
Bacterial diseases: Bacterial wilt, Blood disease, Bugtok, Finger tip rot, Rhizome rot, Javanese vasular wilt, Xanthomonas wilt, Banana bacterial wilt, enset wilt
Fungal diseases: Anthracnose, Armillaria corn rot, Black cross, Black leaf streak, Black Sigatoka, Black root rot, Brown blotch, Brown spot, Ceratocystis fruit rot, Cigar-end, Cladosporium speckle, Corm dry rot, Cordana leaf spot, Crown rot, Cylindrocladium root rot, Damping-off, Deightoniella fruit, speckle, leaf spot and tip rot, Diamond spot, Dwarf Cavendish tip rot, Eyespot, Fruit freckle, Fruit rot, Fungal root-rot, Fungal scald, Leaf rust, Leaf speckle, Leaf spot, Main stalk rot,Malayan leaf spot, Marasmiellus rot, Moko, Panama disease, Fusarium wilt, Peduncle rot, Pestalotiopsis leaf spot, Phaeoseptoria leaf spot, Pitting, Pseudostem heart rot, Root & rhizome rot, Sclerotinia fruit rot, Septoria leaf spot, Sheath rot, Sigatoka, Sooty mold, Speckle, Squirter, Stem-end rot, Trachysphaera finger rot, Tropical speckle, Verticillium tip rot, white Sigatoka
Viral diseases: Bract mosaic, Bunchy top, Mosaic, Streak, Banana mild mosaic, Moko, Banana virus X
These pics are 4 months after the first injection for virus control in bananas. They have already harvested the treated plants and their offspring is growing strong and symptom-free. We are doing another round of injections to protect the second generation and they will harvest a banana bunches that will be very profitable for the farmer.
Banana Plants recovered Banana healthy plant after injection treatment
Banana injected plant showing strong recovery Banana second generation recovered from viral disease.JPG)
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Young plant untreated sigatoka on older leaves Young plant treated 21 days after Soysoap spraying
This banana farm has a total over 2000 hectares. Each airplane load is for max 100 hectares so we did one with air spray with Folicur (Tebuconazole systemic fungicide) mixed with mineral oil plus water, emulsifier and Soysoap B-100. The rest of the farm was sprayed with Folicur alone so we should see in one week a better fungal control on the banana leaves than the control lots and also a much more vigorous, healthier plant. This Friday we will go back to the farm to evaluate the fungal evolution parameters on the leaves which is what ultimately will confirm my previous results and get us this big account in the very near future! See Below when our Soysoap B-100 product was MSU University tested for Folicur Equal it was for control Fungal Disease.
Bananas: The following diseases have been treated:
Black Sigatoka: Dilutions of 1/2% and 1% in water have been used to treat established plantations and newly planted fields (always more susceptible to the sigatoka fungus.
We have sprayed the plants with backpack motor sprayers and also with airplane spraying. We were able to document complete control of stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3. Stage 4 control is probable but due to the high incidence of black sigatoka during the rainy season
(December and up to June) in Ecuador, it is very difficult to convince a banana farmer to let us spray Soysoap B-100 only. And even more, since the fungus pressure is so high , the airplane companies (which use inspectors to determine optimal air spray intervals, which farmers have to "abide by". So our progress is very slow being new and full of bumps but the need for a safe, innocuous, "green" product that "fortifies the plant so as to avoid being affected by plagues and diseases" helps us with the more innovative and open- minded producers. I have had success going directly to large banana farmers who are willing to minimize the use of chemicals and mineral oil. Also I am investing in an approved lab certification to document the minimum dosage required to control sigatoka and what stages we control.
Furthermore, I am in the process of certifying Soysoap B-100 as a bio-stimulant that has fungi static action and fortifies the plant because we can prove that a byproduct of the application of Soysoap B-100 in bananas, apart from controlling black sigatoka, is that the banana plant emits leaves faster, the "ratooning" is higher since faster growth of suckers means more bunches per year. This is very easy to demonstrate. We continue with our tests during the dry season (June/July to December) but sigatoka is less aggressive during this season because of cooler weather. We will go into the rainy season with a very healthy plant status so we should be able to completely prove this rainy season the effectiveness of Soysoap B-100.
We also have been injecting banana plants at a rate of 15 ml per plant (5 ml of Soysoap B-100 dissolved in 10 ml of water) and have documented the eradication of CMV (Cucumber Mosaic Virus) in bananas, Moko, and Erwinia. Injected plants exhibit very aggressive growth specially the suckers and the suckers' suckers as well as very profuse root growth!. In Spanish we call the suckers, the "sons" of the banana plant and then the suckers or sons have grandsons! I do not find the English translation for this word.
Also we have sprayed Soysoap B-100 on the soil in front of the main sucker in a semi-circle fashion. Soysoap B-100 is diluted to a max 1% dilution in water and 150 cc are applied per plant. This creates a very aggressive growth, higher leaf emission, healthier appearance, more roots and therefore a faster cycle to production.
I can summarize that the benefits of Soysoap B-100 in tropical crops is very easy to document and show to farmers since the effects take place in less than a week, which is unheard of unless you are using hormones! And these are very expensive, cannot be overused or the plant goes into lots of stress, etc.
Folicur is a systemic fungicide (Tebuconazole, the active ingredient) which is used alone or in "cocktails" for Sigatoka Control. The dosage is 0.4 liters per hectare. When in cocktails it is usually combined with a protectant fungicide named Mancozeb (Dithane is another commercial name for this protectant fungicide). Syngenta sells Tilt (Propiconazole), Bankit (Azoxystrobin) which is both systemic fungicides which are used alone or in cocktails with other systemic fungicides and/or protectant fungicides.
Syngenta also sells Bravo (Daconil, active ingredient) which is a protectant fungicide used alone and diluted in water and NOT in spray oil, or emulsion.
The difference during the rainy season when the sigatoka fungus is way more aggressive) between systemic fungicides and protectant is that systemic last longer in the plant killing fungus up to 14 days, while protectant fungicides only last 7 days max! And then you need to air spray again adding up to the cost of fungal control.
Then during the dry season the sigatoka fungus slows down and you can lengthen the periods between air sprays as both fungicides tend to work more efficiently since the fungus presence goes down in the environment.
We have been able to prove that instead of using Mancozeb or Dithane as a protectant fungicide that mixes well with systemics, we can use Soysoap B-100 and maximize the systemic fungicide's efficiency while at the same time Soysoap B-100 kills larger lesions than any other fungicide in the market. Soysoap B-100 however only kills per contact. It is not absorbed into the plant to spread and kill fungus spores in other areas of the banana leaves like systemics purportedly do.
Now, we have a small banana parcel where we are treating plants and experimenting with frequencies, concentrations, etc. with Soysoap B-100 and Soysoap B-100 mixed with soluble sulfur, alkaline silica, Copper Sulphate and other natural fungicides or fungi static agents to potentialize the efficiency of Soysoap B-100 so we will keep you informed about this.
As per your questions. We use 200 cc of Soysoap B-100 mixed with 400 cc of Folicur in a 20 liter water/oil emulsion to cover one hectare of bananas. Obviously we can mix it with other systemic fungicides which have different dosages per hectare. The key in fungal control in bananas is rotation of the chemicals to avoid breeding resistance and this is what makes Soysoap B-100 a freaking billion dollar product for bananas because in theory we can use Soysoap B-100 in cocktails during the rainy season and then Soysoap B-100 alone during the dry season and as we go on gradually strengthening the plant, we are able to lengthen the spray periods, and reduce the usage of systemic fungicides because Soysoap B-100 kills more spores and conidia from sigatoka than any other fungicide therefore reducing the fungal population levels.
Banana Report: Soysoap 1 . 48 Page Philippines Banana Protection & Production Report
Caribbean Agriculture Solutions, Saint Lucia
Email: Sales, www.caribbean-agriculture.com,