00:00Northern Territory farmer Marshall Heretis owns 1,400 mango trees on his property at
00:08Berry Springs.
00:09This would have been a branch full of foliage.
00:13In years past, his orchard produced 18,000 trays of fruit in an average season.
00:18That was before his farm, like many others in Darwin's rural area, became the victim
00:23of mango twig-tip dieback, a disease that doesn't impact fruit quality, but can drastically
00:28reduce yield.
00:29Last year it was 4,000 trays, the year before it was 7,500, two of those years we haven't
00:35been near the place even to pick because we've known that the fruits, it's not marketable.
00:42Until now, the cause has remained a mystery, leaving growers to improvise as they treat
00:46infected trees.
00:48We had water tanks on trucks and big fire hoses and wetting everything and it seemed
00:55to stop it in its tracks and you think, oh we've beaten it, but it'd come back stronger
01:02about two weeks later.
01:04But plant pathologists have finally had a breakthrough.
01:07Examining samples collected from across the Top End, researchers have now identified the
01:12fungi that cause mango twig-tip dieback.
01:15We've discovered a group of pathogens that are associated with initiating these disease
01:20symptoms.
01:21They are a very versatile group of pathogens that can take advantage of a plant's stress
01:26response.
01:27It's research the President of the Territory's Mango Industry Association says could have
01:32come sooner.
01:33Narrowing down the issue can take a while, but I don't think enough was done early enough
01:40to get to this stage.
01:42We should have been at this stage three or four years ago.
01:46The fungus responsible lies dormant in its host, only taking hold when the tree becomes
01:51stressed by environmental factors like extreme heat.
01:55And as average temperatures trend upwards, until more is understood about the disease,
02:00growers can only persevere in their pursuit for abundance of the Territory's favourite
02:04fruit.
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