By MaryAnne Musilo

Baba Lydia in Gathiruini Kiambu county was forced to destroy a quarter of his 4,000 tea bushes when the fungal disease Armillaria Root Rot took hold on his farm, with no biological way to treat it or stop its spread.

With his family in tea farming for generations, Baba Lydia relies on tea farming as his main source of income, supplying leaves to a factory under the Kenya Tea Development Agency system(KTDA).

“ The tea farm was my grandfather’s, then my father inherited and later I inherited. I can say I have been a tea farmer all my life. Tea has no pests and I also thought no diseases until I now took control of the farm and faced the Muthingithu disease (root rot),”said Baba Lydia.

Before the disease, his bushes were healthy and yields consistent, until his farm began showing signs of distress.

“ I noticed that some plants were having yellow leaves. That year the rains were heavy. The leaves then started to drop and some bushes started drying,” he recalls.

At first he thought it was a nutritional issue and he used fertilizer that is the foliar feed to try and boost the nutrient intake.

“ My bushes started dying within a month. This was very stressful because the yields were dropping. I never used to harvest the affected bushes,” he said.

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Baba Lydia said that after harvesting, the factory comes to pick the tea with trucks, where the extension officer comes to check the quality of the tea.

“I harvested some leaves from the affected bushes and took them to the extension officer, who told me that it was armellaria root rot, which blocks water and nutrients intake. He later came to the farm the following day to check how the fungus had spread,” he added.

Armillaria Root Rot is caused by the Armillaria mellea or Armillaria heimii fungus. It is commonly linked to poor drainage and waterlogged soils, which have quietly spread beneath the surface. In Kiambu’s high rainfall areas, such conditions can easily trigger fungal growth, especially in older tea plantations.

“I began uprooting the infected plant and burning them, to avoid further spread as advised by the agronomist. I later dug trenches to avoid waterlogging in the section that was affected. I then replanted new plants so as to cover my lost bushes and boost my yield again,” he said.

During that season it was a very hard time for him since he only depended on the tea. 

“The disease is very bad, it can dry up the bushes within months. Of course my yields and income fell but I can say I have now recovered. I now keep an eye on early signs, so as to avoid the fungi spreading. It is also important to note that one cannot use pesticides. Tea can not be sprayed with chemicals,” he said.

“I did not face this disease challenge alone. My neighbours who also grow tea experienced the same issue,” he said.

But the KTDA is extremely strict on quality.

“ During the tea leaves pick up, the extension officer checks if the harvest is of good quality. I have  seen a situation where a farmer’s tea was said not to be of good quality and all her harvest was not bought. This was the reason why I didn’t mix tea from affected bushes and good ones from healthy bushes. They are very strict. After checking they then weight and give us receipts where we keep and receive messages via phones monthly for pay,”

“After uprooting the infected bushes and replanting new ones, it took me about a year to return to my previous production levels,” he said. However, Armillaria Root Rot has no biological treatment, so the only solution is to prevent waterlogging, and uproot any affected bushes quickly, he said..

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