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Bye Bye Bananas — the Return of Panama Disease
Ant sends in a disturbing report in The Scientist on an imminent threat to worldwide banana production. "The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one — known as the Gros Michel — was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct. Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies — Chiquita and Dole — because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease... [Now] Panama disease — or Fusarium wilt of banana — is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, which appeared two decades ago in Malaysia, spread slowly at first, but is now moving at a geometrically quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas, the primary source of nutrition for millions..."
The problem is that all banana plants around today are sterile. The only way to cultivate new plants is by cuttings (taking a small section of an existing plant and growing it into a big plant). Consequently there is no way to introduce new variations. If all the varieties around today become susceptible to disease then that's it, they're gone. For those of us in the west that's just one less choice in the supermarket, but there are vast swathes of the world where the banana is the staple carbohydrate source for millions of people. It'd be like the west no longer having anything to make flour for bread, and having no alternative. Anyone who thinks this isn't a huge problem is wrong.
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They are not all quite sterile... you do get a seed for every few hundred pounds of bananas.
That said, you are essentially right. All cavendish bananas are clones, this makes them very vulnerable to disease.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
One word: http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/pics/wildbanana.jpg
There's a reason modern bananas have been bred to be seedless.
Unfortunately none of those dozens of varieties have the attributes that make the Cavendish banana by far the most successful and important fruit crop in the world:
1. Long shelf life
2. Very uniform and predictable ripening times
That is why you can get bananas cheaply, even though they might be grown thousands of miles from where they are eventually sold.
Most, if not all the other varieties are only viable crops when they are sold very close to where they were grown.
siener's youtube channel
And that is the key to this.
The Cavendish is actually a very inferior banana. It's simply tougher and cheap to transport compared to the other varieties. the Banana companies are panicking because they will have to change how they do business and they dont want to.
Honestly, if you can get to try some of the other bananas out there, you'll never EVER touch the bland yucky Cavendish again. The growers brought this on themselves, the same way the last blight took out the favorite that was EVEN easier to ship and transport but had the advantage of tasting way better than the current offering.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
bananas are supposed to be picked green. they get woody (tough with bitter flavor) if left on the tree to ripen. To get them to be sweeter the blossom is cut off after an incomplete row of banana hands is made which concentrates the growth into the existing bananas instead of attempts to make more.
Get a web developer
If you RTFS then you will see that while 'we' in developed countries will be ok without bananas they make up a large part of the food supply for some people in Africa. This will likely have a massive effect on people who don't have the luxury to choose what they eat day to day.