The CAN will implement a permanent monitoring center against Fusarium race 4 in the region

The announcement was made by Jorge Pedraza, general secretary of the Andean Community (CAN), during an extraordinary meeting of Ministers of Agriculture of the region.

The Ministers of Agriculture of the Andean region met on Wednesday telematically to coordinate activities at the regional, continental and world level against the Tropical Fusarium Raza (Foc R4T).

This, within the framework of an extraordinary meeting of theGlobal alliance against the R4T,which was formed in January 2020 to work continuously with several institutions in order to avoid the propagation of the plague, educating the actors in the chain and investing in new varieties of the crop.

During the meeting, the ministers presented their action plans to avoid the spread of the fungus that has already been detected in Colombia, in 2019; and in Peru, last April. The plague was also discarded last week by Venezuela where there was suspicion of the presence of the fungus.

One of the ads made it Jorge Pedraza, general secretary of the Andean Community (CAN), who ratified the support to the Andean countries and indicated that working on a supranational regulatory framework to act in these cases, and that a permanent monitoring center will be implemented.

By Ecuador, the largest producer and exporter of the region, the minister Xavier Lazo He presented the work done to prevent the entry of this plague and ratified Ecuador's commitment to continue articulating preventive and containment measures to face it.

"We are alert and prepared to face the problem," he said, adding that the work done in Ecuador will benefit other regions to contain the advance of the plague.

Among the actions carried out, Lazo indicated that Ecuador has eleven regulations to strengthen prevention mechanisms; The security protocols in ports, airports, and border control centers have been reinforced; Raza 4 command has been formed by the Regional International Agricultural Agricultural Organization (OIRSA); More than 40,000 monitoring, more than 20,000 trained producers, a network of laboratories, education and communication campaigns, among others, have been carried out.

Mariana Escobar, representative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Peru, He pointed out that together with the IICA and the health agencies of the four Andean countries they work to advance measures to strengthen prevention in the Andean countries, and considered that "it is very important that prevention measures are sustained and sustainable over time."