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Disease Threatens 99% of the Banana Market (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the 1950s, Panama Disease wiped out the dominant type of banana that was imported worldwide. Banana-growers had to switch to a different strain, the Cavendish banana, at great expense. Now, a new study finds that a more virulent strain of the disease is directly threatening the Cavendish banana. Banana plants are dying from it throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. It hasn't reached Latin America yet, which is good — that's where the vast majority of the world's bananas are produced. But the researchers say it's just a matter of time. "The latest strain is likely to put the risks of monoculture on display once more. And while scientists might find or breed a better one in the mean time, the reality is that this time around we don't have a formidable replacement that's resistant to the new strain of Panama Disease. Once it reaches Latin America, as it is expected to, it could be only a matter of decades before the most popular banana on the planet once again disappears."
I'm in Asia and the bananas look fine to me.
CUI BONO?
profits of doom upon us? ask ed snowden your questions continues here on /....don't miss it
History has so many lessons to teach. We have common phrases about in our language. Yet, still, we fail to learn.
Reliance on one type of a crop led to the Great Irish Famine, killing millions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
As already mentioned in the article, in the 1950s this happened already with bananas.
A quick Google search will yield many more examples.
And when will they do to resolve this? Odd-on they'll just find another single type of banana to grow everywhere...
*sigh*
Hide the banana
Seems like a overblown crisis. If it will take decades to be an issue, I am sure someone will work out a gene therapy or countermeasure to the disease by then.
This is not the 1950s. The current state of bioengineering is far more advanced than the 1950s.
You little fruity patooty.
Minions!!!
they're eating all the bananas
The Cavendish banana is a tasteless, waxy disaster of a fruit.
It is the banana equivalent of the cardboard-flavored Red Delicious apple which has been so over-engineered for shelf-life and shiny skin that all traces of flavor vanished long ago. The fact that people still eat Cavendish bananas, Red Delicious apples and various varieties of ludicrously orange oranges with skins like pachyderms. is testament to the fact that American consumers really don't want fruit that tastes good as much as they want fruit that looks like it was rendered in a 3D program.
Here in Asia, other less "industrial-grade" bananas still exist. They are sweeter, more flavorful and won't survive a plane crash like your laboratory-born neo-fruit.
The death of the Cavendish could be a wonderful thing.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Having tried a fair bit more bananas that most people, I disagree. I would say Cavendish is just fine. Sure, there is diversity in banana fruit tastes, and IMO Cavendish is not as good as, say, a Pisang Awak, but I don't get where people call it bad. I've had worse varieties.
and won't survive a plane crash like your laboratory-born neo-fruit.
Cavendish has been cultivated for well over a century. Not exactly what you'd call a 'neo-fruit,' as if that would be a bad thing anyway.
Red Delicious apples did have me convinced for a long time that I disliked apples, but Cavendish bananas seem fine to me. I can see how they might be improved but they do at least have a flavour and a texture. And they make yummy muffins.
Apparently the artificial banana flavouring found in candies is much closer to the Gros Michel. I've only ever had the Cavendish. I wonder if any banana connoisseurs here would agree?
a taste test has shown that the Gros Michel does closely resemble the artificial banana flavor: "It's almost like what a Cavendish would taste like but sort of amplified, sweeter and, yeah, somehow artificial. Like how grape flavoured bubble-gum differs from an actual grape," he explains. "When I first tasted it, it made me think of banana flavourings." - http://io9.com/debunking-the-m...
The fact that people still eat Cavendish bananas, Red Delicious apples and various varieties of ludicrously orange oranges with skins like pachyderms.
How do you shop? by smell or by the look for the fruit? I generally shop by smell however I do notice what you say about some of the American fruit - it looks great but tastes pretty ordinary. As the taste usually tells you about the nutrient content, you are right to pursue a natural taste, not just for taste.
I general let bananas ripen and other fruits for a day or more in the open air because of the amount of refrigeration and packing in sulphur dioxide gas to keep them in 'suspended animation' before shelving. It gives the fruit a chance to be a fruit again, instead of a consumer item.
Here in Asia, other less "industrial-grade" bananas still exist. They are sweeter, more flavorful and won't survive a plane crash like your laboratory-born neo-fruit.
The death of the Cavendish could be a wonderful thing.
Australian produce is fantastic. Oranges are so sweet that you can devour 5 of them before realising it. Mangos, cantelope (rockmelon). We have red delicious, but you have to get them at the right time for them to be juicy and sweet, at other times they are exactly as you say, however there are about 5 other types of apples to choose from, about 3 varieties of pears, excluding nashi. I would imagine that Asia as an amazing variety of things available from the few things I see brought over.
I checked and our local bananas are cavendish however there are another two varieties I generally see. I've found they are pretty good if you leave them ripen in the air.
I hope they sort it out, I eat lots of them.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
One of my co-worker in Singapore has a banana plantation in Indonesia, and because of the disease he almost lost everything
Once the disease arrive, all the banana trees died, within weeks
Banana tree truck is unlike the solid wood tree truck - the core of the tree trunk is layered, much like onion, and the layers are tender - the disease, a type of fungi, attacked the gaps between the layers inside the core, and the rot came from within
There is no cure, absolutely no cure
Once the plantation is infected they have to chop down all the trees and ***BURN EVERYTHING***, , else the fungi may spread to nearby banana trees
Bonus trivia ...
Do you know how the disease spread to Africa?
The disease hitched a ride on the bottom of a pair of boots
Yes, *BOOTS*
Some 'banana expert' went to Asia to check the banana disease, he wore a pair of boots into the plantation which was affected
Some months later, that same 'expert' went to Africa - and he wore the *SAME* pair of boots and walked into a pristine banana plantation (absolutely no disease) and the fungi which hitched a ride on his boot was transferred into the soil, and from there onwards Africa's banana are no longer disease free
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Cavendish has been cultivated for well over a century" perhaps the parent is comparing this to rice, which has been cultivated by man for over 10,000+ years. I have no idea what he means by "surviving a plane crash", since since bananas don't really have a survival rate once their off the tree...
The main reason the bananas are vulnerable to this is that all commercially grown bananas are sterile clones, reproducing asexually: http://www.damninteresting.com...
Wild non-cultivated bananas are pretty much all seed and wouldn't make a very desirable alternative: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
Since the commercial bananas are all identical, they are all equally susceptible to the same disease, which leaves three options:
1) Identify and switch to a different strain of banana that's not susceptible, which takes a lot of time, money, and likely has other drawbacks
2) Forget about bananas -- hard to do in parts of the world where they are a staple food
3) Use genetic engineering to try to create a disease resistant version before it's too late
Fact is that Cavendish becomes the main variety because the 'Panama Disease'. as mentioned in TFA, wiped out the previous, much more tasty variety
In Asia you get to enjoy more varieties because banana originally came from the South East Asian region (mainly Indonesia and Malaysia, with some in Southern Thailand and on some island in the Philippines)
There was no banana in Africa nor in America - all the bananas in Africa was brought there some 2 thousand years ago, most probably by sea-faring tribes originated from Southern China / Vietnam which plied both the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean
In places like Indonesia and Malaysia there are other varieties of bananas, unfortunately many varieties had gone extinct due to habitat destruction
I have tried 'red banana' before, yes, blood red in color, very tasty and smell really nice too - if you happen to be near Singapore, Indonesia or Malaqysia do not forget to taste all the different varieties of banana that you would never get to taste elsewhere
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
that there are lots of different type of bananas being eaten every day...we only get one type here in america....but if you go to the tropics you will see lots of different types of bananas, so I am sure there will be a replacement.
church of the better resurrection... https://betterresurrectionchurch.wordpress.com/
... to destroy every last Bananaphone!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Unlike rice or apple or onion, banana plants do not 'sexually reproduce'
Banana plants produce its 'offspring' by the root, very much like bamboo
That is why it is not easy to 'engineer' newer varieties of banana plants
That is why for the past several decades Cavendish banana has been the only variety available in 90% of the world (almost 100% of the Western world)
But things may be changing though ... with the advent of genetic engineering a lot of works have been done in combining gene sequences of different species of banana, hoping to produce newer varieties
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Bananas were discovered by the Portuguese on the Atlantic coast of Africa. They cultivated the fruit on the Canary Islands. From there it was introduced to the Americas by Spanish missionaries. Documenting the arrival of bananas in the New World a Spanish historian wrote: “This special kind [of fruit] was brought from the Island of Gran Canaria in the year 1516 by the Reverend Father Friar Tomas de Berlandga.".to the city of Santa Domingo whence the spread to the other settlements on this island [of Hispaniola].".And have been carried to the mainlaetting the history of Musa is almost criminal and many who just grab a banana do not understand that the species is not native to the Americas or parts of the Pacific.
We can only hope that some of the primary sub types of plantain and bananas remains free from the list of plants that this disease is effecting. Plantain is a very diverse species and going bananas over one cultivar of Musa is stupid and a prime example of how abuse of the environmental resources of this planet by todays industrial farming technology is not a long term reliable method to feed the world.
The whole problem with moving species around the planet is the fact that historical uses of the species become forgotten and the diversity how they can be used is also forgotten. How many North Americans have actually cooked plantain and used it as a staple food? This is the real problem with our mono culture for the purposes of concentrating sugars and starches; we essentially throw the baby out with the bath water and go for sweetness in our diet by only using musa in the sweetest forms possible. Little do we understand that the leaves, the shoots and root stocks are viable food products. We harvest only the fruit and trash the rest. In trashing the rest we introduce problems with concentrating the diseases that latch on to the plants and like a zombie plague of ebola virus the plantations become overrun with diseases including virus.
The very same problems occur with mono culture fish farms, feed pens, over grazed land and all the other industrial methods we employ to create our food. Until we truly start to move away from industrialized mono culture techniques that does not care for the environment and instead relies upon the overuse of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics we will continue to experience trouble with many diseases effecting our use plants, livestock and even ourselves in the case of antibiotics!
This is a plant virus that is causing the problems in this case but one can be certain that the virus is spread more by the farming methods used currently.
The study of plant viruses is a relatively new field and it is becoming obvious that mono culture is starting to cause more than just problems with larger pathogens like plant fungi and bacteria that are controlled with spray chemicals on industrial farms.
The article does not clarify whether or not the virus is a retro or what not and is not specific about the nature of the virus. The field of direct acting antivirals is new and exciting but is not the best answer to this problem. I know I was just cured of HCV with Harvoni which costs over a thousand dollars US per day to treat! So eliminating plant virus problems will be far too expensive an undertaking given current patent laws and the greed of corporations. All one has to do is look at the cost of drugs to understand why creating plant antivirals is not going to work. I am sure the BANANA REPUBLIC big shots will just try to find a cheaper way around the virus if it hits there companies. By there proven tactics of just moving around the way they always have when the land and labour costs and local politics start to effect their bottom lines. Woody Allen already did a film about Bananas, now he could do a sequel and call it The Return of The Banana Zombies. especially if the fruit companies and their supporters get back into power and the price of oil and bananas go bananas!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
This stupid meme was never funny.
that there are lots of different type of bananas being eaten every day...we only get one type here in america....but if you go to the tropics you will see lots of different types of bananas, so I am sure there will be a replacement.
Most of the bananas in the tropics (i.e. Musa spp.) are full of seeds. The "edible" varieties of banana do not contain developed seeds, and this lack of developed seeds is what consumers want. That's why all the varieties of "edible banana" are cloned. I have eaten (well, tried to eat) species of banana that are full of seeds and they're not exactly palatable.
You need to let it ripen. If you're fussy, bananas are best when the skin starts getting black spots. If you don't mind the actual fruit getting mushy in places, then let the skin get almost all brown: Sweet and delicious banana.
Except it all tries to kill you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Kinda like your mom.
Guess we all gotta go to The Water Bar then.
mod up +6. I can't wait for the cavendish to die. its complete garbage.
The difference is most stores stock a variety of apples. You only get one type of banana.
Banana's like coffee only grow in certain parts of the world and don't transplant easy. Apples grow in lots of places each with different flavors.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Well, considering it has been almost a decade since this story last appeared here
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
I would imagine they have this nearly sorted out by now, no?
Or is this like fusion power and personal jet packs, always a decade away (it doesn't matter which decade. Pick one. I liked the 1980s).
Since then, I've tried to find if different bananas were available to North America. Not really, so obviously bananas aren't important enough to save (you know there would be a national outrage if BSE were ready to wipe out beef production).
It's not like many Americans actually eat fruit anyway.
the rice cultivars now in mainstream use are around a 100 years old as well irrc.
Cavendish is fine imho as well. I don't really like the sweeter variants, too sweet for me.
Australian produce is fantastic.
For the most part. Something has happened to tomatoes in the last couple of years. They're all white and tasteless, and I can't work out what happened.
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Many fruits don't grow in all regions of the world. It's not so much what the consumer wants, but what the sellers are willing to import. They don't want their inventory rotting before it gets put out to be sold.
He is likely comparing the taste of supermarket bananas to ones ripened on the tree. A lot , if not all north American supermarket bananas are picked green and shipped to ripen either in transit or in a controlled environment before being put out to sell. Apple's are somewhat treated the same where they are doused with gasses and refrigerated to last almost a year out of season.
With both fruits, there is a big noticable difference in tastes between ones ripened on the plant verses ripening in storage. We have a large orchard near here and they allow the apples to ripen on the tree for the product they sell to the public and make cider. I'm not sure if they even store apples for outside the season. Compared to the same apple from a supermarket that may have traveled 1000 or more miles and sat in storage, it is like two different varieties and you end up looking to see if the name is spelled different or something. Likewise, i had fresh bananas when i was at a plantation in south America and couldn't believe how much sweeter and banana tasting they where. It makes the stuff I can get at home seem more like a plantain than a banana. I made a comment about how they should ship those instead of the ones we get and the response was they are the same, its a matter of shipping, storage and so on.
I bet what he is experiencing is the difference between fresh verses handled for three months or whatever. To this day, i find apples from the supermarket to be deficient in flavor.
That means that they're being picked too immature. Tomatoes maximize flavour when allowed to ripen on the plant as long as possible. But producers prefer to pick them as close to the "hard green" stage as possible to minimize damage in transit/processing and maximize shelf life (they can make them red and soft with ethylene gas right before delivery to stores but they can't give them flavour). So there's a conflict between these two competing interests.
There's really an amazing difference between a vine-ripened tomato like you might grow in your garden and a green-picked/artificially ripened store tomato. I dare say there's not another common crop around that has such a dramatic difference. Even the texture is different - the thickness of the skin, how they "squish" under pressure, etc.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
I know genetic engineering is still a little green, but this situation appears ripe for genetic experimentation. Call me a fruit basket, but I think it's time we peel back the shroud around genetic engineering and produce new varieties of disease-resistant bananas and diversify that genetic tree.
"Having tried a fair bit more bananas that most people, I disagree. I would say Cavendish is just fine. Sure, there is diversity in banana fruit tastes, and IMO Cavendish is not as good as, say, a Pisang Awak, but I don't get where people call it bad. I've had worse varieties."
We're dealing with foodie hipster one-upmanship here. One of the rules is that a fruit only tastes good if you pay a fortune for it at Whole Paycheck.
I did a search on Gros Michel, since I've only ever eaten a Cavendish. I like Cavendish's quite a lot; there's a reason other than cost why bananas get added to so many things - even the "bland" ones are good. Turns out GMs are still around, just not on a commercial scale. Hell, LOTS of heirloom bananas are around. It's just a matter of putting forth the effort to cultivate them well. So bananas won't be $.20/lb any more, but at least they'll taste better, which is where produce has been trending anyway.
This book on banana blight was published back in '07. It would be great if there were a map of how the disease has spread since then.
They are infected with Republican Base disease.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
WTF, global warming will kill any disease.
This is only a problem from a commercial perspective (and for people who really, really like bananas). The banana that we currently have won't disappear. It will become scarce, it will live on in the wild, and it will mutate to become resistant. In the mean time, growers will have to come up with another banana. Which might taste well enough to the general populace. Or not. In which case we won't eat bananas for a while. Which isn't bad either.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Better than the "Republicans want everyone dead" meme, and way better than the loser who feels the need to sockpuppet-spam attacks on someone about some old argument over (antivirus software?)
There have always been dumb memes on Slashdot... we still sometimes see the ancient "First Post" meme (probably one of the first forum memes around). Others, like "Natalie Portman naked/petrified/with grits" have thankfully died out. Goatse attempts have significantly died down as well.
Some weren't so bad. I never felt angry after getting Rickrolled, for example - more like "Oh, okay, I'm an idiot" ;) And does anyone else remember the old "Martian Council" posts that someone used to make every time a space story got posted, where some leader of the Martians would announce their objection to NASA's plans and their strategy to thwart them? They practically created an alternate universe in those posts :) Seriously, why don't we get more "story-meme" spam wherein the spam evolves, introduces new characters, new plot developments, etc? Much more entertaining!
It's been a hot start to summer so we are probably in for some bushfires unfortunately, I hope it's not too bad. Funnel web's and red backs are getting feisty, I was bitten by a whitetail once a tiny pimple looking bite with two holes. but oh my goodness, it activated the adrenalin and I was in serious full body pain for about three days. after that the pus literally poured out of the wound and I needed anti-biotics for weeks. My arm didn't necrotise, fortunately, but about a year after it had healed the bit location swelled for about 2 weeks and then died down again, very nasty.
Huntsmen - whilst harmless are so huge that you can't help freaking out, especially when you see them in the rearview mirror and can't work out if they are out or *in* the car and those fscking souther cross are just big with a big web and they just love putting those things where you walk gggaaaaaaahhh!, you can literally feel their weight when you splat them with a news paper.
I think a few people have had shark attacks. I found a blue ring octopus once, about the size of your hand, but mean looking and the blue rings glow as bright and deadly looking as anything I've seen saying 'don't fuck with me'. When I was body surfing, because I swim pretty deep to get a good wave, I got hit by a incoming bluebottle jellyfish swarm - The tentacles wrapped around my armpit (hitting the gland) over my chest, wrapped around the other arm from the bi-cep to the wrist to the back of my knees wrapping itself around my calf. It was sheer agony, which the life guard saw happen (fortunately) and they got me to the clubhouse and put me in a red hot shower (from nice cool surf). they had me down on a gurney for the next 3 hours with ice packs on me as I tried to hold myself from going into shock, I didn't have to go to hospital, but they wouldn't let me drive - so they took me home. The next week was nasty and it took two more years to extract all the stingers. roughly thirty other people got hit as well after me. not fun, lucky it wasn't a box or I'd be dead.
It's best to just keep your distance from crocs (unless you're hunting them - but they taste depending on what they eat - yummy if they've been eating fish - which is usually barramundi, not so nice if it was a rotton dead cow[I've heard a fresh cow makes them taste like steak flavoured fish]). It's been a bad start to drop bear mating season with some injuries recorded, sneaky fuckers. Red belly black and brown snakes are the reason why you keep the lawn mowed as they are very poisonous and whoever the genius who introduced that introduced pythons here (they aren't native) they are getting big enough to eat a roo - so to all those collectors of south american snakes that live here, thanks for that, it's not as if we don;t have enough things (hopfully they will eat cane toads brrrrrr).
Worst of all though, it's bogan season here and there are quite a few around, barefoot in the shopping centres, streets.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Red delicious has been cultivated longer than that. The issue isn't how long it's been cultivated it's what have they done to it along the way.
That's exactly what I was going to say. Mod parent up. There is simply no way a properly ripened Cavendish banana (skin with brown spots) could be called "waxy" - it is sweet and delicious. "Waxy" might apply to the green or greenish yellow stage, but I don't know why anyone would eat them at that stage.
Maybe you were incorrectly taught to discard them as soon as the first brown spot appeared because that meant they were rotten? I guess I have known a couple of people like that.
It's a wonder that there are any humans left in Australia.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Exactly.
A friend of mine did a few months of work and travel in Australia.
One of her jobs was to dump perfectly ripe red tomatoes, and pick the green ones and send them to Europe.
2008 called, he wants his history back:
http://www.slashdot.org/story/102169
That's always the case, though. I'd guess that most Americans have never actually had a fruit ripened on a tree. I grew up in Hawaii and used to get mangoes straight from the tree. The ones at the grocery store are not even close. The same thing goes for oranges and tomatoes. If you're lucky enough to live in a place where you can grow your own fruit, it really is worth doing so.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The fact that people still eat Cavendish bananas, Red Delicious apples and various varieties of ludicrously orange oranges with skins like pachyderms. is testament to the fact that American consumers really don't want fruit that tastes good as much as they want fruit that looks like it was rendered in a 3D program.
I mostly agree with you about the Red delicious apples, which are just worthless, and those creepy oranges, but you're allowing your hatred of all things American to get in the way of your reasoning. Cavendish is not a fragile berry, and it handles being shipped to the land you don't like.
Red delicious as noted is like eating crunchy cardboard, but at the supermarkets, I have many varieties to choose from. And as soon as a variety shows up that we haven't had, my wife buys some and we give 'em a try. Many look nothing like a 3-d apple.
Pretty much the same with oranges. That weird nasty orange with not much flavor and thick skin shows up once in a while in markets, but there are a lot of good varieties to choose from. We keep a big bowl of apple varieties, orange varieties, and yes, Cavendish bananas on the dining room table as a snack.
The death of the Cavendish could be a wonderful thing.
So is your point that you applaud the elimination of an export market and the money that it brings in?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's a wonder that there are any humans left in Australia.
Australia may be dangerous, but humans are much moreso.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
At least there are some varieties of banana that are resistant to this strain of Panama disease.
Citrus greening:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It is a bacterial disease that is wiping out citrus in many places worldwide. It's spread by a sap sucking insect.
There is NO non GMO citrus plant that is resistant. Lemons, limes, oranges, tangerines, kumquats, pommelos, buddha's hands, every single citrus is in the process of being wiped out.
So far, the only resistant citrus plants are ones that have had spinach genes grafted in.
Citrus greening is rampant in Florida, and many areas worldwide, but is spreading somewhat slower in California because citrus areas tend to be separated by ridges of hills.
Infected plants only survive, for a while, if they're given antibiotics.
It's looking awfully like it's soon going to be a choice of GMO citrus or NO citrus.
And while you're GMO-ing citrus, how about removing or reducing the fumarins which cause skin cancer?
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/...
(A swipe at nature nutjobs, "natural" doesn't mean "good" every time--citrus might be better if it didn't cause cancer, right?)
--PeterM
I agree with the Red Delicious apple thing. I'm old enough to have tasted the original Red Delicious and it was a very good apple in that time. I can no longer find anything like that on displays these days. I tried many times in the hope to find this tasteful apple and finally gave up.
Achille Talon
Hop!
The Economist sounded this exact alarm more than 10 years ago: http://www.economist.com/node/...
I would think that for most people, except in places where nothing can grow, it's not luck that dictates whether one can grow one's own fruit, but choices. If the convenience of living close to work in a city is your choice, it's not bad luck that you can't grow apples at home.
And even for those who have chosen to live outside cities, most seem to have chosen to have a front lawn that never gets used instead of fruit trees, which require less maintenance. All to keep up with the Joneses, I guess.
I have a small orchard in front of my house, and luck had nothing to do with it. I moved here by choice, and planted heirloom trees by choice. No regrets.
Australian produce is fantastic. Oranges are so sweet that you can devour 5 of them before realising it.
I like my oranges full of other taste than just sweetness. So flavorful that you can't even eat half an orange before realizing its awesomeness.
If the skin is harder to peel and they're full of stones, so what? It's the taste that matters.
If what you want is sweetness, eat candy.
When you only grow one thing, it's in constant danger from something coming along and killing it all. They need to have two or three varieties, planted together, to prevent this happening.
Here in Asia, other less "industrial-grade" bananas still exist. They are sweeter, more flavorful and won't survive a plane crash like your laboratory-born neo-fruit.
The death of the Cavendish could be a wonderful thing.
The Cavendish banana has been cultivated for something like a century, it wasn't "laboratory-born". It's commercially successful because it can withstand the rigors of shipping, unlike about every other banana strain currently around.
As for the destruction of the Cavendish being a wonderful thing.. sure, if you're the kind of monster that doesn't give a damn about the people who depend on harvesting them for their livelihood. There's an entire global industry around the Cavendish that will collapse and wipe out jobs around the planet. But hey, as long as you can get something subjectively better, screw everyone else eh?
Here's a modest proposal for a name for the tallest survivor "The Top Banana"
" If you're lucky enough to live in a place where you can grow your own fruit, it really is worth doing so." - not just fruit, vegetables as well. taste is so much better
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
This seems to pop up every few years. I think the first time I was told the Cavendish was a goner was in 2000. Seems to be holding out pretty well though.
I know this is a discussion about fruit, but is there such a need for grocers' apostrophes?
Slashdot ran the same story back in in 2008. Seven years later, I'm still enjoying Cavendish bananas. Must be a slow news day.
If 'tree ripened" isn't a hipster fad already, I suspect it soon will be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
nonsense, go to an asian grocery store. there are many, many types of bananas
Even the Gros Michel banana that the Panama disease attacked is still around, not "extinct" and not "wiped out" though large commercial plantations can't exist without the disease coming. There are many, many kinds of bananas, check out a large well stocked asian grocery store. Some kinds have to be cooked but there are plenty of types that can be eaten "raw" and have no seeds.
So we'll have bananas to develop the next disease resistant type, the fruit will not disappear from earth.
The problem is not Cavendish bananas, it's people who have no clue. Hint, a ripe banana is full of dark brown spots. A yellow only banana is not ripe and not ready to eat. In case you're blind, you can also go with smell.
If you really want an example of a disaster of a fruit, let's talk about American strawberries or worse, blackberries. Those enormous things are... I don't know what they are, but they certainly don't taste like real strawberries and blackberries.
. . . appear to believe in "drop bears."
The Cavendish banana is a tasteless, waxy disaster of a fruit.
Feeling a little snobby today are we? Personally I think the Cavendish is a good fruit. Not awesome but perfectly fine, tasty and practical. I enjoy them and I make no apologies for that. Yes I've had the pleasure of other kinds of bananas and many are better and more flavorful, but that doesn't make the Cavendish bad.
The fact that people still eat Cavendish bananas, Red Delicious apples and various varieties of ludicrously orange oranges with skins like pachyderms. is testament to the fact that American consumers really don't want fruit that tastes good as much as they want fruit that looks like it was rendered in a 3D program.
I (and many other Americans) would be very willing to eat other kinds of bananas but guess what? They don't sell any other kind where I live aside from a small number of starchy plantains. Bananas don't grow in most of the United States except in a green house so we end up with the monoculture Cavendish. Provide another option that people can buy and I'm pretty sure people will buy it. There are more than enough foodies in the US to appreciate a "better" banana but someone has to bring it to market first. Your notion that Americans don't want good fruit is outdated nonsense.
The death of the Cavendish could be a wonderful thing.
Only in the sense that maybe it would get rid of a monoculture. Otherwise it is a very bad thing.
Apricots.
I love them, but I rarely buy them. At least it's easy to tell if they are good because of the scent. The ones in the stores rarely have any scent.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
You don't understand the problem. All strains of banana are monocultures, because their seeds never ripen. This means that you can only reproduce them by cloning (an easy process for bananas and I think dating back to per-columbian times.).
Now even clones accumulate mutations, and that's why there are several different strains of banana, but there's no sexual recombination of genes. So you end up with a monoculture in each area, with each area having a slightly different accumulation of mutations. But they are quite similar. Similar enough that a fungus can wipe out an entire crop leaving no survivors (because there's no useful amount of genetic variation). And because the fungus is not a monoculture, it can more readily adapt to various different strains. Thus bananas varieties are inherently subject to being wiped out by a fungus, and there's a fungus that's been doing this since the 1930's (at least). Rapid long distance transportation makes things worse, as it allows the fungus to spread more rapidly and widely.
And this problem exists for ALL strains of banana. There are some for which the fungus has not yet adapted, but their time will come.
Bananas are one crop for with GMO techniques are necessary. Naval Oranges will be another. (IIUC, seedless watermelons are produced by chemically treating the seeds that will grow into the watermelon plant, so this is a different matter.)
Do note, however, that while bananas and naval oranges are extreme cases, the problem exists to a lesser extent in all monoculture crops.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's always the case, though. I'd guess that most Americans have never actually had a fruit ripened on a tree.
When it comes to bananas I'd prefer not to, I buy them just as they turn yellow because that is when I like them. Once they ripen they become so sickly sweet that I can't stand to eat them raw, only when mixed into banana bread or a shake.
You need to let it ripen. If you're fussy, bananas are best when the skin starts getting black spots. If you don't mind the actual fruit getting mushy in places, then let the skin get almost all brown: Sweet and delicious banana.
To each their own, I personally find them to be unpalatably sweet once the spots form and utterly gross when they are brown. I eat them when there is still a tinge of green in the skin.
I agree 100% with GP. I went to the Andes 25 years ago and ate many types of bananas, tiny, pink, green, mushy, etc... Many were so good that ever since I've been unable to eat that Cavendish crap. It just makes me gag. I had the same problem for a while after living off fresh caught salmon in Alaska and coming back to eat artificial-fed farm salmon...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Only an Australian who hasn't visited New Zealand would call say "Australian produce is fantastic".
As the taste usually tells you about the nutrient content, you are right to pursue a natural taste, not just for taste.
The taste dosent tell you much about the nutritional content actually, if you look at scientific studies. Simply storing the produce properly results in relatively low nutritional difference between peak and consumed states assuming it was not frozen (due to often being balanced first), or cooked. In many cases peeling (such as apples and peaches), and cooking are far and away the largest factors in reduced nutritional value. In some cases, with some nutrients, the content available for human absorption actually increases with storage. Even being harvested early and shipped for long periods dosent affect nutrition that much, often far less than processing such as cooking it. So taste, while important for enjoyment, is a poor indicator of actual nutritional value.
Horse shit, the red delicious is just an all-red clone of a Standard Delicious, an ancient heirloom apple variety. If you plant the seed of a Red Delicious, or Golden D, or any other "Delicious" version, the children revert to a Standard Delicious. Very old Red D trees will sometimes also revert. The flavor does not change.
The reason the Red Delicious you buy taste crappy is because they're grown in a low quality environment for apples, and are picked too early. They're grown in very large quantities in those conditions, and so they represent the main lower-priced variety. If you go to a high quality apple region like Central Washington and visit a farm store then you can taste what the variety tastes like when grown in the right soil, the right climate, and picked at the right time to sell locally. And you'll find that the Red D tastes exactly the same as other Delicious varieties. Which is quite good. It is a juicy, sweet apple. It has different properties than a Granny Smith, but only somebody completely clueless about apples would blame the variety in this case.
Find a better store, and stop mixing memes. Over-engineered for shelf life is true for things like tomatoes. Grow some in a garden and it is instantly obvious when you taste what an heirloom tomato tastes like. But freakin' apples?! No man, a waxed apple has a really long shelf life already. Grow a Standard Delicious in your garden, and compare it to one from the store. If they taste different, usually it is because the one in store tastes better. If you knew what you were doing, they'd taste the same.
It is pretty obvious that you've been told by your locals what fruit in the US tastes like, but no, you don't actually know.
And if your oranges are excessively orange, I'd like to propose that perhaps they have had food coloring added during growth, something that is banned in the US. Oranges, including the main low-flavor commercial variety that are indeed bred for shelf life, spontaneously re-green. They are not excessively orange. Oranges tend to get a fully orange color before they're ripe, and then they start to re-green. Americans generally know that the correct way to select oranges for purchase is to heft them in the hand; ripe, juicy oranges are heavier. And often less orange. If you're in a place where the consumers don't know shit about oranges, that might explain why the store is putting out oranges picked for color instead of ripeness. That's if they don't just have food coloring added.
We only have 5 or 6 banana varieties in local stores, but many of the Asian varieties have a distinctly startchy texture, along with being slightly astringent. They improve a lot with cooking. Raw, Cavendish has distinctly superior texture, high sugar, low starch, and indeed a very mild flavor. The real problem with the flavor though isn't the variety, but the user; many people seem to believe that a banana with spots has spoiled! Of course, it is just starting to ripen. Wait until the skin has black spots head to toe, with only minor black streaking and significant yellow areas remaining, and it will have a much more well-developed flavor. Still not my favorite, but they taste a lot better than in the unripe state; if you actually like the flavor of bananas. People who dislike that flavor are going to naturally prefer the mildest, sweetest version, or ones that are cooked in coconut products.
Damn straight.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the store apples are high grade for about 10 months of the year; 5 months of quality from the US, and 5 months of quality from Peru and Chile. And then a pair of 1 month transition periods where we get the same grade of apples as everybody else; less flavor, sure, but the texture difference is really apparent.
And if you go to a discount supermarket, you get the same quality they sell in non-apple regions. Most of the year here I can go to the supermarket and get apples that are fresh and indistinguishable from ones at the farm store, or ones that I "U-Pick" ripe off the tree at the farm. They'll squirt juice onto my monitor if I take a bite carelessly in front of the computer. The mushy ones they put in the 5lb economy bags won't even leave juice on your lip, much less squirt it across the room. But that is because those bags are packed for economies of scale and they're picked and handled for shipping even when sold locally.
The difference compared to a banana is that a waxed apple stored at the correct temperature can be picked ripe and stay fresh for months. Apples are full of tart, tasty natural preservatives. If I do a "U-Pick" run and have unwaxed apples, they'll only stay fresh a few weeks, but still much much longer than a banana. A waxed apple from the same farm, from the same row of trees, picked the same week, will still be crisp after a month in a fruit bowl at ~60F. You can't just wax a banana and have it stay fresh, so the distance you can be from the farms and still get fresh-tasting fruit is much shorter.
Another fruit that tastes different with modern varieties is the blueberry. I forage wild blueberries in the summer, and they're a very tart fruit, as sour as a cranberry. (they're in the same genus) They sweeten more than a cranberry when cooked, though. The farm variety is much larger, sweeter, higher yield, and juicier. Sometimes people let the memes overcome their brains and they always assume that farmers breed things only to taste worse. Those people should visit farms more often.
The local farms often pick all the green tomatoes for sale, and then when they have them all they open the field to "U-Pick" locals for 50 cents/lb. Most of them at that point end up falling off the vine unpicked. The flavor is quite good though, even though it is a long shelf-life variety. The picking and storage practices are a bigger cause of the poor flavor than the variety. Picked fresh they're too strong to make a sauce without watering it down a little, unless you want it to be acidic enough to cause a pucker response.
Braeburn is the world's best apple. I have no idea whether or not it's on the shelves in the US, but here in New Zealand it's widely available. Damn, it's almost worth moving here just for them.
We're dealing with foodie hipster one-upmanship here. One of the rules is that a fruit only tastes good if you pay a fortune for it at Whole Paycheck.
You can get much better bananas much cheaper by going to asian supermarkets. There are lots of them in LA and they have all sorts of non-cavendishes cheap. In chinatown there are little storefronts that have lots of fruits that you won't see at regular supermarkets and are usually ripe and tasty.
The vast majority of Americans live in single family homes, with fruit trees in their back yards. Most communities have large feral blackberry patches that are heavily utilized in season, especially by lower income groups.
It is hilarious how far your stereotype is from reality.
The popularity of the Gros Michel was due to its ability to travel well. It had a thick and resilient peel. So it could be shipped.
With the demise of the Gros Michel the Cavendish was looked at as a replacement and shipping in boxes allowed the more fragile fruit to survive shipping.
SHUT UP!
We've got too many people living up here already.
#DeleteChrome
The Council of Elders approves of this message. K'Breel wishes you to know that on the day when your blue world is finally taken over, your gelsacs will be removed last.
The lawn in front is the unused portion of the property. It is a big entrance area, that is all. The fruit trees are in the back yard, which is much more private, and is the outdoor part of the property that is actually used. Back yards tend to be much larger than front yards. The size of a front yard is typically controlled by zoning laws, with all houses in a neighborhood set back from the front of the property line by the same distance. This helps to ensure that the back yards have the expected level of privacy. In my city, nearly all houses have both trees and grass in the front, and trees in the back unless they were cut down to make room for a larger garden.
The shape of the lots and the ways houses are built generally means that a person can have an excess of seasonal fresh fruit just around the perimeter of the back yard. Planting fruit trees instead of decorative trees in the front is generally a social or political act; those trees are rarely utilized for food. They're for the birds; literally. Or hungry kids passing by.
Fresh fruit is pervasive, if you look at people's back yards. I guess that isn't what they show on the teevee, so the stereotypes don't reflect it. You can always spot a new first time home-owner because they're trying to give away fruit to their friends and co-workers until they realize everybody has enough already, and it is OK if it falls off the tree and fertilizes the soil.
Red delicious has been cultivated longer than that. The issue isn't how long it's been cultivated it's what have they done to it along the way.
Nothing, that is what they have done it. Exactly nothing. It is a clonal variety that doesn't breed true. They literally have done nothing to change it.
You can breed new types of Delicious, because it is an heirloom variety that breeds fairly true. But it is multicolored with streaks of red and yellow. But any of the mono-color Delicious varieties are clonal. They all have the same DNA. You can't breed a Red Delicious, you will get only Standard Delicious offspring.
You're really lowering the bar for "ignorant blathering," Mr Coward.
Around here the farmed salmon are fed byproducts from the fish packing plants, and it is high quality food for them. It really shouldn't reduce the flavor qualities.
The flavor of farmed salmon is poor because they are less vigorous. Wild salmon have a healthy, high-exercise lifestyle. Farmed salmon have degraded DNA and even when released in the wild for most of their lives, they are less vigorous, less strong, less healthy, and have little genetic diversity.
Farmed trout taste bad for more reasons, because they're not picky eaters and they get fed a lot more grain filler in the pellets.
If you think farmed salmon is bad, try farmed tilapia. Sometimes they taste fine, but they're highly susceptible to "off" flavors based on diet.
What are you talking about? Banana plants are a monoculture because of the (industrial) way they are cultivated. The cultivars like Cavendish are sterile because they are a hybrid between two species. They can be grown from seeds, it's just the seeds cannot be propagated. You have to go back to the original crosses to get viable seeds. Even if they weren't sterile, they would still be grown as a monoculture because that is the most convenient method of organizing a large tract farm. There is no law of nature preventing bananas from being cultivated in a different way. This is just the way the industry developed.
The latest advance in tomatoes is leaving a little bit of vine attached; instead of picking the tomato off the vine, they cut the clusters and pack them with the vine. Here in the US, at first this was just the expensive ones in yuppie stores, but now the cheapest type of imported Mexican tomatoes are done this way. They're cheaper than the standard flavorless ones. They retain probably 25% of the flavor this way, instead of just being a reddish watery thing. Expect the tomato situation to get slightly less bad when more farms catch on.
Here people pay about double for local off-season greenhouse tomatoes that are picked ripe.
Apricots go from hard as rocks to over-ripe and on the ground in about a week... and that is on the tree! It is just not a good store crop. If it is in the store and wasn't locally grown, it is has living in a weird alien chemical atmosphere. You're really better off with dried ones, because they were picked fresh. The problem there, they turn brown, so most of them are saturated with sulfur. Trader Joes has a good price on dried, unsulfured though.
There is a public tree nearby that I eat them from most years, but you really have to keep an eye on it or you'll miss the whole season in a couple days.
Cow disease, kill off all the cow, price of beef goes up. Pig disease, kill off all the pigs, price of pork goes up. Chicken disease, kill off all the chickens, price of chicken goes up. Now it's bananas turn. Kill off all the bananas, and skyrocket the price of bananas.
Just warn them that it rains for 9 months a year and umbrellas are for social outcasts.
If they really love apples that much, they'll fit right in.
Don't forget about the local NW-grown strawberries. They're much tastier than California (or wherever) grown berries, but they simply don't have the same durability. So, it's a variety that most people never get to taste. Strawberry shortcake with regional-grown strawberries was a favorite at local fairs when I was growing up.
Even so, I think it's great to have these different varieties. The firmer strawberries aren't terrible by any means, and it's great to be able to enjoy them throughout the year instead of the month or two we'd get them in the summer otherwise.
Regarding the apples - yep, it's definitely one advantage of living in one of the world's apple-growing capitals. And yeah, I've had wild blueberries while hiking in the cascades before many years ago, though I don't remember them being as tart as you indicated. Maybe the ones I had were a bit more ripe.
BTW, I tried to look up which variety of strawberry was grown locally, and came across this list. Holy crap... I'm sure we don't get all those varieties in the supermarket, but it's apparent we don't exactly have a "strawberry monoculture".
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Well, there kind of is. It's possible that some strain will eventually have edible, soft, pleasant seeds, but right now a non-sterile banana is packed with seeds that makes it hard to eat and far less of a useful fruit.
Bananas are produced industrially for the same reason iPhones and Testla Model Ses are. There's no other way, yet demonstrated, to produce a practical product. But I guess there's always 3D printing, the answer to everything...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
One thing I miss in America is the stem of the banana "tree". Banana tree has layers and layers of greenish "bark". As you strip them, it turns white and right in the center, about 2 inches in diameter the "stem". Harvested and sold in all vegetable shops in South India. It is not sweet. It is more like white radish in consistency. Chop it into disks, saute it with musturd seeds, some lentils, asafoetida and salt. Sprinkle grated fresh coconut. Wow! Tastes. absolutely. fantastic. It is also gets used in a tamarind based sauce called sambar. Out of this world. Now a days they are slowly making an appearance in Indian grocery stores. Before it gets totally wiped off, may be it will be available in USA.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Is it possible for some samples to be stored safely in vaults, wait for the disease to sweep through the land and bring it back? Or the fungus has other hosts and lives forever in the soil?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I prefer Cox's Orange Pippin
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
It threatens 99% of all banana plants.
There's nothing wrong with neo-fruit. I'm not much of a banana man myself, I prefer apples. And almost all the really nice varieties, are recent. Cripps Pink is from the seventies and Nicoter is from this millennium.
I expect it's much the same with bananas: whatever variety that will be the best when it reaches the customer will dominate. It doesn't mean much if a certain variety is sweeter or more flavourful than the Cavendish if you have to live next to the banana tree to be able to eat it. And the thing is, from what I understand Cavendish was our plan B; if it goes we have to either accept bananas which are less tasty, have shorter shelf life, aren't available out of season, are more expensive or who knows what... or hope that horticulturists can come up with a neo-banana.
But right now we don't have that, so I think banana lovers everywhere are wishing the disease were gone.
That apple is available, but not as good as a Fuji ;-)
Cavendish are the go to banana in Aus, Lady Finger are a very distant second that they have grown hard to find over the last couple years. I try to go red tip when I can, much better environmentally and a better pay for the farmer. Not sure what the other side of the world is like, but here our two biopoly supermarket chains are bankrupting all of our farmers with really pathetic pay rates pushed due to their market control.
I grew up in Northeast Pennsylvania. I don't know that our experiences there were unique or not, but I do suspect that far fewer people today have the same experiences I did.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
+1 this. It's not like if the Red Delicious and Cavendish disappeared that local farmers would suddenly start growing the fruit in every state so people could get the "good" fruit locally. Instead the prices would go up and availability would go down, until the new varieties were bred to be as hardy and shipable as the old varieties (and thus less flavorful.)
If someone wants to pay to import special varietals or travel somewhere to get them that's fine. But without handling fruit in a mass production manner there wouldn't be enough of it for the millions of people who'd like something easily available and reasonable priced, even if it was grown thousands of miles away.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
_Some_ rice cultivars might be that old, but most now are modern varieties developed by companies, international programs or national programs.
The hidden truth underneath the banana story: the future will still have bananas, and maybe more variety.
Good Night, Mrs. Cavendish, Wherever you are!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You had me going until drop bears. Good show.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
The animal that kills the most humans in Australia....is the horse.
I went to the Andes 25 years ago and ate many types of bananas, tiny, pink, green, mushy, etc... Many were so good that ever since I've been unable to eat that Cavendish crap. It just makes me gag.
So you found something good and immediately became a hipster snob. Nice. "Makes you gag"? Really? Cavendish bananas are the same as they always were. They're fine. The only thing that has changed is you and if you liked them before then there is no reason to dislike them now. It's ok to prefer one of the tastier varieties of banana (I do too) but I think it's a little snooty to look down your nose at perfectly good food just because it isn't the best there is.
I had the same problem for a while after living off fresh caught salmon in Alaska and coming back to eat artificial-fed farm salmon...
Umm, yeah. Food that is fresh tastes better. News at 11. If you eat the best stuff grown near where you are you'll probably enjoy it more and the quality will be better. I live in an area where cherries are plentiful, fresh and available from every local farm stand during the summer. Better than anywhere else in the country. The ones I can get out of season from non-local growers simply don't compare. So I don't bother when they aren't in season or I preserve them so I can enjoy a treat in January.
This whole discussion is way off course from the beginning due to a (commonly reported) fallacy that dominates the news coverage about Panama Disease Race 4.
Panama Disease Tropical Race 4 is a threat to world banana production not because of the Cavendish monoculture (which dominates dessert banana production) but because Race 4 is deadly to 85% of all banana varieties, including starchy non dessert types. The majority of the world banana crop is not Cavendish, but starchy plantains that form the principal diet of millions (though plantains lead Cavendish only by a small margin due to the First World's demand for the dessert fruit). Nearly all cultivated plantains are vulnerable to Race 4 also, and they could not be more different from the Cavendish. Even if the world dessert banana market were being served by several varieties, it is likely they would all be equally vulnerable to Race 4.
The story should be about the unique deadliness of Race 4 threatening all world-wide banana production, most especially the plantain food crop, not the fate of the poor Cavendish.
I think the coverage is being misframed for two reasons: First Worlders in general only know about the Cavendish and so see the problem only in terms of how it affects them; and lazy journalism that is playing this as simply a repeat of the Gros Michel episode nearly a century ago, and of the Irish Potato Famine. These are major events in world agriculture and history, but this is no carbon copy of those events, and is not due to a monoculture (though that does not help things).
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
That's because, for the majority of the US outside of Florida and maybe Southern California and the southern tip of Texas, the choice is between tropical fruit that can survive shipping or no tropical fruit at all.
Tasteless apples, however, are indefensible.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Woops, I bought bananas in the past year. I guess that makes me part of the banana market. Does that mean I have a 99% chance of dying from some disease? You said market, not supply.
The best Bananas I once bought in Portugal, 20 years ago.
Very small things, as big as two of my thumps, a bit thicker though.
Also in Paris, there are lots of african or arabic shops that sell "big bananas" which you either cook or fry. They use them as "potato replacement", done right they are quite tasty.
I stopped eating "normal bananas" aka Chiquita or what ever brand, 25 years or 30 years ago ... I don't even eat them when they are lying around somewhere for free.
Plenty of fruits are so bad in our days, they make me sick. The smell alone often. Tomatoes ... a disaster. Luckily we still have the old apple breeds like Boskop in Germany, my favorite.
I'm planning to get a house with big land and build up a perma culture garden, trying to cultivate old variations of food.
I'm in the Philippines over the holidays. Already eager to see their fruits ;D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Cavendish has been cultivated for well over a century" perhaps the parent is comparing this to rice, which has been cultivated by man for over 10,000+ years. I have no idea what he means by "surviving a plane crash", since since bananas don't really have a survival rate once their off the tree...
Issue is that the cavendish, the most widely-grown banana, like a number of other banana species, had the ability to produce viable seeds bred out century(ies) ago(1). All plants of each of these varieties are clones, so a pathogen's 'trick' that works on one works on all. They have lost the protection that is one of the primary reasons why sexual reproduction is such a good idea. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Am I the only one who sees a/the problem there? There once was an american company called "General Food", or "General Fruits"? ... (including Cuba, but it is claimed that Coca Cola was the company behind the dictators in Cuba)
Responsible for most of the wars, dictators etc. in south america
There were numerous companies which basically raped and pillaged their way through the Caribbean and other places. It's where the term Banana Republic actually comes from. The company you are thinking of is the United Fruit Company which is now Chiquita Brands and yes they (and others) did some truly evil shit. Truly some of the most reprehensible behavior ever engaged in by a company.
That said, all that tragedy has little to do with whether the Cavendish is a good tasting fruit or not. It plays a big role in why we only have to one variety but it's a bit of a mystery why today don't see more even in specialty food stores or places like Whole Foods. I would have to think there would be a market for better tasting varieties bananas in the US, even at a premium price.
I love eating bananas so much, I was shocked and scared when I read "Yes, we'll have no bananas" in a (paper) edition of The Globe and Mail (Canada's National Newspaper) in 2003 http://www.commondreams.org/vi...
I live in Australia. And there are severe restrictions and huge financial penalties on where you can grow bananas. In 1919 almost all of Australia's bananas almost wiped out. People still talking about it
right, but I still don't have any idea what the "surviving a plane crash" is about...is that a part of some arcane test people put various types of bananas through? "Well, the XYZ banana is still in one piece after we we put it in the cargo bay of a 747 and flew it into a mountain. However, banana ABC was destroyed on impact." Or is the poster referring to their ability to survive if a plane crashes into a banana tree orchard? Is this an actual problem, like for some reason banana orchards are notorious for planes slamming into them?
I'm still curious about the plane crash...is the Cavendish somehow immune to damage if the plane it's being transported in crashes? That's some pretty amazing breeding if so lol.
funny you mention birds; my parents had a cherry tree that they watched fruit and had maybe a day or two until the harvest. That night they heard many birds but didn't grok it until the next morning...when they awoke to a bare tree hahaha
oh yeah, nothing more tasty than walking around and stumbling upon a feral blackberry patch of just ripened berries! Especially when you've been exploring wooded areas for a few hours...
"And if we could only step aside and trust in nature, life will find a way." - Dr Ian Malcom
There's nothing wrong with large blackberries. You can pick them wild that way, if you can get to them before the birds do. I suspect the reason they're often tasteless is they've got a ridiculously short shelf life, so most of the ones you get are past prime.
I'm much more of a Pink Lady man myself.
but of course apples should all be fermented into proper cider tho. (propery cider means not magners or bulmers but proper tart cider with a hint of after sweetness. kinda like myself.)
So basically Australians go to Pamplona for a day off.
http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I'd guess that anyone living in a big city has never actually had a fruit ripened on a tree.
There are a ton of farming towns in the US. Fresh fruit, peppers, veggies, all summer long. And if you live in a progressive city like Portland OR, there are 6-7 farmers markets inside the city all summer/early fall long.
I bet Hawaii was nice though, in that most stuff probably grows year round?