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Significance

While coconut palm is highly valued as a woody ornamental plant in the United States, it is an important subsistence crop in the coastal tropics. Almost all parts of the coconut palm are used, providing food, drink, fuel, shelter, and cash income for producers. The term lethal yellowing (often shortened to LY) was first used in the mid-1950s to describe a fatal disease of unknown etiology that had affected coconuts in western Jamaica since the 1800s.

During the last four decades, outbreaks of lethal yellowing disease have killed most of the once prevalent tall-type coconut cultivars in both Jamaica and Florida (United States). The disease has also been reported from the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Leeward Islands (Nevis), and southern Mexico (Yucatan peninsula).

Recurrent coconut diseases that resemble lethal yellowing have been recorded elsewhere in the tropics under a variety of names depending on location. Collectively referred to as “lethal yellowing-type diseases,” they include Awka wilt (Nigeria), Cape St. Paul wilt (Ghana), Kaïncopé (Togo), and Kribi (Cameroon) in West Africa; lethal disease (Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique) in East Africa; and Kalimantan wilt (Central Kalimantan), Natuna wilt (Natuna Islands), and Malaysian wilt (Peninsula Malaysia) in South East Asia.

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