TheVeggieProfessor

Hi all. I am in south FL and have noticed bunchy top-like symptoms on a banana. I'm hoping someone here might be willing to weight in and offer any insights as the what is going on.

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/showp...0&ppuser=33775

This webpage is working very slow for me for some reason, so I was only able to upload one photo to my gallery.

I have another photo on a tropical fruit forum post here: https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=56739.0

Reminosys

Boron-calcium deficiency exhibits symptoms very similar to BBTV, so I wouldn't be too worried about BBTV being in Florida. That banana is definitely coughing up a bloom, that odd corn shaped thing will soon reveal your bounty! Moving forward you may want to add dolomite/ag lime, along with a small dose of borax, your soil might just naturally be nutrient deficient. Calcium and boron work together in banana metabolism, so lacking either nutrient can cause issues almost indistinguishable from BBTV. Unfortunately there's no fixing this plant/the leaves that have already emerged, but adding it now will help with the fruiting process, and for future banana plants that start looking like this.

Not to say that it's impossible for BBTV to have made it there, (an example being careless plant movement/smuggling bringing citrus greening disease to FL and CA), but plant imports tend to be vetted more thoroughly when entering the continental US.

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Aspiring botanist | Trash horticulturist