The Statue and Management of Coffee Wilt Disease (Gibberella xylarioides) in Ethiopian Coffee Production

Abstract

Coffee is directly or indirectly a source of livelihood for more than about 25 million people engaged in production, processing and marketing of the crop. Besides the crop is attacked by several diseases among which coffee berry disease, coffee wilt disease and coffee leaf rust caused by Colletotrichum kahawae, Gibberella xylarioides and Hemileia vastatrix respectively are the major fungal diseases contributing to reduced yield in the country. CWD (Gibbrela xylariodes) is prevalent in almost all coffee-growing regions, with national average incidence and severity of 28% and 5%, respectively.CWD is a soil-borne pathogen and this presents difficulties in the application of chemical treatments; affected fields may need to be left as fallow for some years or other crops planted. Coffee production (yield) at the farm level decreased due to CWD by 37% (from 1482 to 932 kg per sample farm), and this led to a decline in income of 67% (from 5038 to 1651 birr). The annual national crop losses attributed to CWD was 3360 tone amounting to US$ 3,750,976 in Ethiopia (CABI, 2003). This economic loss coupled with difficulty to manage the disease indicates that CWD is the most difficult disease of coffee, in Ethiopia which needs more attention and the most distractive coffee production threat.

Keywords: Coffea arabica, coffee wilt disease, economic importance, Gibberella xylarioides