Slashdot Mirror
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..."
Your correct. But the US Media is running out of things to scare the people about.
The article is less to do on bananas going extinct then rather trying to sell GM crops to the public.
Yes, monoculture is a HUGE problem.
At the moment I'm working in the bio/ag-tech industry and can see the same thing coming down the road in the wheat/corn/soybeans/milo industry, where big industry players have foolishly limited the gene pool in the name of profit.
The worst part about it is the fact that many of the people driving monoculture are trained scientists who, for some reason, are oblivious to its negative ramifications.
Posting as AC to avoid other, uh, negative ramifications
Why? because this news is OVER 3 months old. I heard it on NPR "science friday" back in Late April early May! it has been covered heavily in all the earth science and microbiological journals for nearly 3 months now and yes those have covered how it's spreading even faster.
It's like Slashdot waiting until the end of the month to announce, "Mars polar lander made it to the ground and is sending pictures!"
So yes, it's a slow news day as it's a rehash of old news that has had wide coverage.
Next up, The MIR space station is going to be decommissioned, and spacelab will fall from the sky.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not that scientists are oblivious to negative ramifications -- it's economics, specifically tragedy of the commons.
If everyone else is cloning Tasty Profitable Banana, and you don't, you go out of business because either your bananas aren't Tasty or your bananas aren't Profitable. Therefore there's a penalty for maintaining variation, and the only potential benefit -- not having your whole crop wiped out by a blight -- isn't something you can bet on. Most likely, economic forces will drive you out of business long before your more varied gene pool can have any beneficial effect.
There's a benefit to society (and the entire banana-growing industry) if there is a diverse gene pool, but no individual business has an incentive to maintain such a gene pool.