8Tomato production in the country has been severely hit by the outbreak of disease, leaving many farms devastated across the major producing states.
Tomato farms at the Kadawa Irrigation valley, which is the major producing area and demonstration farms designed to feed the Dangote's Dansa Tomato Company in Kano State, have been damaged by disease.
Member representing the area at the National Assembly, Honourable Muktar Chiromawa, stated that although samples are not yet collected by experts, the diseases are suspected to be tuta absoluta.
Chiromawa said they are in touch with a South African company that produces the technology that can mitigate the disease.
The lawmaker, however, noted that the effect of the disease depended on the stage it affected the plant. He said it can occur during the nursery, which killed the plant or at the time the plant was producing fruits, which could affect the quality of the fruits and the yield.
John Okwudili Ene, a consultant, development horticulturist based in Abuja stressed that spider mites, tomato seed bora and a host of other tomato diseases could cause severe economic damage to farms.
He advised farmers to always fumigate their farms before planting to avoid that kind of scenario, adding that tomato could be prone to a lot of diseases, which demand farmers to take necessary action to forestall such eventualities.
Reports from major producing and consuming states showed that the situation was responsible for huge economic loss to farmers; and created huge demand and rise in prices of the commodity across the country.
Kano
Our correspondent in Kano who visited the Kadawa irrigation centre revealed that most of the irrigation sites were being cleared in preparation for the wet season farming.
It was also gathered from the farmers that most of their tomato farms were affected by what they referred to in Hausa as 'Yana'.
According to one of the tomato farmers in Kadawa, Usman Isa, the strange disease attacked the tomato leaves, which resulted to stunted growth and affected yield, adding that "even though we do not usually engage in producing tomatoes during the wet season here, most of the tomatoes in Kano during the wet season come from Gombe and Zaria. Our dry season yield dropped drastically this year due to damage to our tomato farms, which affected our yield.
"This infection has also completely wiped away Dangote's tomato demonstration farm situated here at Kadawa, and that has completely brought us into panic and believing that it is a sort of plague or something. What really baffles us is that we have not received any attention from the authorities," lamented Isa.
Halliru Idris is a tomato seedling breeder who said that the disease attacked his tomato seedlings and nursery, adding that he made effort to stop it, as a seedling breeder, yet it defied all measures he had taken.
"Look at these seedlings, even if you are not a farmer you can tell that they are not alright. This is what has destroyed virtually all the tomato plantations here. I have received some scientists visiting from a private pesticide company who bought about five beds of tomato seedlings and are presently making a research on it," said Idris.
An agronomist with Kano State Ministry for Local Government, Lawan Bashir, said the infection is probably that of spider mites, stressing that "spider mites are very little arachnids that are difficult to see without a magnifying glass unless they have multiplied so much as to be in colonies.
The mites feed on the plant's sap, working from the bottom of the plant to the top, and on the underside of the plant's leaves. There is no particular season in which the mites are more prevalent; they are active all year.
"When spider mites invade your tomato plants, they inflict small wounds on the plants that can eventually harm or kill them," said Bashir.
It was gathered that, a basket of tomatoes currently sells at N12,000 to N15,000 as against N3,000 to N6,000 this period last year.
Katsina
Katsina State which is one of the major tomato producing states is also caught up by the disease as many tomato farmers in the state are devastated by the destruction caused on their farms.
Speaking with Daily Trust last Saturday at Dantankari, Mal Nasiru Dantankari explained how his three farms were completely destroyed by the worm attack within a short period of time.
"In less than a week I lost an estimated 1,000 baskets of tomato to the strange attack this year. The worm attack is very fast as it takes only
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