Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 : )
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.
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.
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!
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?
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
"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. ...."
That is the recent, European and American history of the fruit, and what they 'discovered' in west Africa was that Africans were already cultivating it. Bananas had been discovered and used by others a whole long time before that. As can be seen in any wider treatment of the subject.
Yes I am well aware that the great Khan loved bananas and was also bananas from drinking too much of the products of fermentation using both them and rice! Same as Alexander the Great when he conquered Persia and discovered the delights of the east. In Persia there were laws where the production of sweet Musa products was only permitted for nobility for the purpose of the creation of alcohol. And the peasants were permitted only to use unripe fruits.
The Romans were more sensible about the use of Musa and saw it as an exotic staple from largely unknown places in Africa and the Middle east down to Mesopotamia, they were not aware of far eastern species of the plant. So for the Romans, plantain products were mostly in the form of a salt cured potato chip like products that were traded for throughout the Roman empire after the defeat of Hannibal.
The history of food usage and cultivation is a fascinating subject and is a key in itself to our understanding of agriculture and how we as a species have managed to fuck things up over the centuries. The historical use of Musa in China is even older and like much of ancient Chinese history is not well understood in the West, or in China for that matter but you can bet that they brewed beer from it as well as used the plant to the full extent possible given the size and age of their Empire.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call