Banana production in the Philippines has seen a sharp decline this year. The third quarter saw a decline of 1.9% and fell to 2.3 million metric tons. This is in comparison to data collected a year ago of the same period. This troubling news comes from a new report by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The drop in output has been blamed on Typhoon Melor which hurt crops all around the country in December 2015. “This could be attributed to the following reasons: smaller fruits were harvested and fewer hills bore fruits in North and South Cotabato, due to the effect of drought in the previous quarters,” the PSA said in its latest report. “Nona also caused a decrease in the number of fruit-bearing hills in Oriental Mindoro,” it added. Not all varieties and regions were affected however. Some even saw growth, like the Davao region, which was the top banana producer for the third quarter, accounting for 39.37 percent of output in the third quarter. The region’s banana production grew 3.2 percent to 907,501 MT, from 879,781 MT recorded in the same period last year. “Higher production was reported in the Davao region, due to an increase in area and the number of bearing hills harvested for the Cavendish variety,” the PSA report said. Source - businessmirror.com.ph