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Agricultural drone flying over a farm field

C-DRONE GUIDE · 5 SEPTEMBER 2026

Drone spraying in banana plantations against black Sigatoka: 2026 legal framework, method, price (French Antilles)

Since 2012, black Sigatoka has forced Guadeloupe and Martinique's banana growers into a fungicide spraying rhythm few French crops match: five treatments a year in Guadeloupe, up to twelve or thirteen in Martinique, on top of permanent manual leaf-stripping. Aerial spraying by plane or helicopter — the only way to reliably cover foliage sitting four to five metres up — was banned in 2012 when the EU's sustainable pesticide use directive took effect in the French Antilles, leaving growers to treat from the ground on plots sometimes too wet or too steep for a standard sprayer. An interministerial order of 29 May 2026 reopens a narrow door: the drone, under precise technical conditions and product restrictions. Here is what the order changes, what a drone flight genuinely adds against the disease, and what it costs.

Published on 5 September 2026, reviewed on 5 September 2026 — regulations in force as of September 2026.

Black Sigatoka: a disease pressure the end of aerial spraying made chronic

Black Sigatoka (Mycosphaerella fijiensis) is a fungal disease that attacks banana foliage: necrotic streaks progressively spread across the leaves, reducing the photosynthetic area available to fill the bunch and speeding up fruit ripening to the point of compromising its marketability. First detected in Guadeloupe in 2012, it became permanently established on the archipelago and then in Martinique, where disease pressure — higher at altitude and in humid areas — now demands one of the most sustained treatment rhythms in French agriculture: five fungicide applications a year on average in Guadeloupe, against twelve to thirteen in Martinique.

That same year, 2012, also saw the end of aerial spraying — by plane or helicopter — in the French Antilles, which until then had covered foliage sitting four to five metres up without ground access. That end followed the application of EU directive 2009/128/EC on the sustainable use of pesticides, transposed into French law under article L. 253-8 of the rural and maritime fishing code, which sets a ban in principle on aerial spraying of plant-protection products. Growers then turned to sanitary leaf-stripping — manually cutting away necrosed leaf portions to slow the fungus's progress — supplemented by ground treatments when pressure warrants it. A landmark review by A. C. L. Churchill, published in 2011 in Molecular Plant Pathology, notes that almost all banana cultivars grown worldwide are sterile, unsuitable for breeding resistant varieties: fungicide remains, for lack of a genetic alternative available at scale, the main lever against the disease (see the study on Google Scholar).

What law 2025-365 and the 29 May 2026 order change

Law n° 2025-365 of 23 April 2025, adopted after a three-year national trial evaluated by the French food-safety agency (Anses), wrote a permanent derogation into article L. 253-8 of the rural code: a remotely piloted aircraft — and it alone, excluding any manned aircraft — may spray plant-protection products on three categories of plots: those with a slope of 20% or more, banana plantations, and rootstock mother vineyards grown along the ground. The law also opens new three-year trials on other crops. In every case, only biocontrol products, those authorised in organic farming and products classed as low-risk may be applied by drone — a restriction that, for bananas, effectively excludes the last curative triazole fungicide still used on the ground, judged too toxic to fit the framework.

What remained was to set the technical operating conditions: that is the purpose of the interministerial order of 29 May 2026, co-signed by the ministers for agriculture, ecological transition and health, published in the Official Journal on 31 May. The order caps the drone's maximum take-off mass at 200 kg, limits its flight height to 3 metres above the crop being treated — on a four-to-five-metre banana plant, a genuine height well above the ground —, caps its speed at 18 km/h, and requires spraying parameters that guarantee even coverage and minimised drift. Every intervention must fit within an application programme subject to prior authorisation: a grower cannot rely on a one-off declaration and must have the protocol validated before the first campaign.

What a drone flight genuinely adds — and its limit

The first documented benefit, from trials run in Martinique under the Optiban programme and later during the campaigns that prepared the 2026 order, comes down to two figures relayed by the Antillean press when the order was announced: treatment roughly three times faster in the field than a manual backpack-sprayer pass, and a reported reduction of around 40% in the volume of plant-protection product used. That gain in speed and volume says nothing, on its own, about the treatment's biological effectiveness: a study by L. F. O. Ribeiro and co-authors, published in 2026 in the journal Agriculture, tested several application rates and droplet sizes sprayed onto banana plants by remotely piloted aircraft: the tested parameters significantly influenced leaf coverage and product deposition, but the authors found no direct link, under their trial conditions, between those spray-quality indicators and Sigatoka control efficacy as measured by the Stover index (see the study on Google Scholar).

In practice, that means a well-calibrated drone does not by itself guarantee better protection than ground-based means: the restriction to biocontrol and low-risk products — milder than the triazole excluded from the scheme — weighs more heavily on effectiveness than the application method does. The drone remains a complement to sanitary leaf-stripping and ground treatment during pressure peaks, not a substitute that would let growers dispense with them — a nuance that explains why the French Antilles' banana industry describes the 2026 authorisation as "restrictive and conditional" rather than a return to pre-2012 aerial spraying.

Aviation framework, operators and 2026 prices

The rural-code authorisation changes nothing on the civil aviation side: with a payload that can approach the authorised 200 kg, the mission systematically falls under the specific category, with an operations manual covering agricultural spraying. The remote pilot must hold both the CATS certificate and the Certiphyto professional applicator licence, the operator must be registered on AlphaTango and covered by aerial liability insurance suited to carrying and spraying plant-protection products. For the general framework of flying in Guadeloupe, Martinique or the other French overseas departments and regions, our guide to drones in the French overseas territories details the local airspace specifics.

The market remains nascent: since the order was only published in late May 2026, the number of operators authorised in the French Antilles to document a compliant application programme can still be counted on one hand, and rates are negotiated case by case rather than off a published price list. As a benchmark, derogated spraying services already documented in mainland France — steep-slope vineyards, see our guide to drone spraying on steep-slope vineyards — run between €20 and €60 per hectare per pass; on a banana plantation treated five to thirteen times a year, that unit rate quickly adds up to an annual per-hectare budget well above a vineyard treated a handful of times. Pooling between neighbouring farms, already practised for other Antillean crops, will likely be the main lever for bringing that cost down to a sustainable level. For a banana grower in Guadeloupe or Martinique, request a quote stating the plot area, the observed disease pressure and the planned treatment schedule.

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