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An inaccurate newspaper report has put the livelihoods of banana growers in jeopardy, a local official has claimed.

Deng Qinxin, director of the Gaozhou bureau of fruits, said banana sales in Gaozhou, Guangzhou Province, had slumped since March when a local newspaper published an incorrect report claiming that many banana trees in the southern Chinese region had been infected with a disease known as "banana cancer".

Deng said the price of bananas had also plummeted in the city, which is a major banana production base within Guangdong Province.

The price in Gaozhou is currently about 1 yuan (US$0.13) per kg, just half what it was at the start of the year, he said.

Local banana grower Zhang Yufang said on Monday that she now has to work long into the night in an effort to move her stock, cycling through the alleyways of Gaozhou looking for customers.

The 42-year-old, who manages two mu (0.13 hectares) of banana trees, said that in the past she never had to worry about sales. But now, even though the price is very low, sales remain sluggish, she said.

"Zhang is just one of the millions of victims of the incorrect media report," Deng was quoted as saying by the Guangzhou-based New Express Daily yesterday.

Figures show that banana growers in Guangdong and Hainan provinces have so far suffered losses of more than 700 million yuan (US$91 million) because of the incorrect media report, Deng said.

It is the biggest economic loss caused by an incorrect media report ever recorded on the Chinese mainland, he said.

Forty days have passed since the report was published, but banana sales have shown no signs of returning to normal, Deng said.

On March 13, a Guangzhou newspaper said that many banana trees in the southern Chinese region had been infected with Panama disease, also known as "banana cancer". The report was reprinted in several newspapers across the country.

In the report an "expert" claimed that people eating the infected fruit ran the risk of getting cancer. The words struck fear into many local people who subsequently stopped eating bananas, Deng said.

"Some banana trees have been diagnosed with the disease, but people will not get cancer by eating the fruit," he said.

"No cases of humans suffering from banana cancer have ever been reported," Deng said.

(China Daily May 9, 2007)