Musa maclayi

New Guinea's rainforests are being logged, cleared, and converted at a rapid rate due to timber extraction, subsistence agriculture, and expansion of industrial agriculture, with a further threat posed by the mining industry. Between 1972 and 2002, Papua New Guinea lost more than five million hectares of forest; since 2002, a further 2% of the country's primary forest has been lost (Butler 2006, Mongabay 2019). In the Solomon Islands, tree cover has decreased by 5.9% between 2001 and 2018, with more than 50% of this loss occurring within the final five years of that period. In both areas, shifting agriculture has been the major driver of tree cover loss. Drivers of permanent deforestation in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, namely urbanisation and commodity-driven deforestation, were only identified as dominant drivers in 3.6% and 12% of 10 km grid cells analysed, respectively (GFW 2019). It should be noted that the specific impact of deforestation on members of the Musa genus is somewhat difficult to quantify: while clear-felling or land conversion is likely to be detrimental to the species, wild bananas spring up in transient, often man-made, habitats and thus may benefit from human disturbance to some extent (Simmonds 1962). Felling of trees along narrow stretches of roadside may actually provide suitable habitat for some Musa species (Kiew 1987) and M. maclayi has been observed growing at seral sites (Argent 1976). Further research into threats to the species may beneficial to better understand how the species responds to disturbance and to identify whether any threats, named or unidentified, pose a more significant risk.

The genus Musa is listed in Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) which aims to guarantee sustainable agriculture and food security through the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, as well as ensuring the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of their use (FAO 2009). There are 13 M. maclayi germplasm accessions of wild origin held worldwide, 11 collected from Papua New Guinea and two of unknown origin. Seven are held by the Bioversity International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre (ITC) in Belgium, three are held by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), South Johnstone in Australia, and one is held by each of the Centre africain de recherche sur bananes et plantains (CARBAP) in Cameroon, the Institute of Fruit Tree Research, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IFTR/GDAAS) in China, and the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) in Guadeloupe (Ruas et al. 2017, Genesys Global Portal on Plant Genetic Resources 2019). One botanical garden is listed as a site of ex situ conservation for this species (BGCI 2019). This species is not known to have been collected from within any protected areas but its native range overlaps with many of them (Protected Planet 2019); if it occurs within any of these protected areas, passive conservation is presumed.