Recent appearance of black sigatoka in banana plantations of Brazilian Amazonia.

Symptoms of the black sigatoka (Mycosphaerella fijiensis) were first observed, in December 1997, in Tabatinga and Bejanmin Constant near the border of Brazil with Colombia and Peru. Meanwhile, the disease has been disseminated in the whole state of Amazonas and had already reached the states of Acre and Rondonia, in Brazil. Most of the banana plantations in this region have already been destroyed by this disease. As control strategies, resistant banan cultivars are being distributed to the local population, and quarantine measures are being adopted to impede the dissemination of the pathogen into other banana-producing regions of Brazil