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..."

Look on the bright side of...

Will this finally be the end of "Peanut Butter Jelly Time"?

monoculture is a problem

but it is also solved by genetic variation. the story is a little hysterical, as african varieties are also genetically different enough to resist the new cavendish-hungry fungus. not that the african varieties can't be attacked, but the emphasis is on african VARIETIES: more genetic variation means more resistance to the weakness of monoculture

Re:monoculture is a problem

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.

Re:monoculture is a problem

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

Re:monoculture is a problem

That said, you are essentially right. All cavendish bananas are clones, this makes them very vulnerable to disease.

and they taste like wet paper bags. I haven't eaten a Chiquita in over 10 years, I prefer any other which at least taste like a banana. Chiquitas were only bred for looks.

Re:monoculture is a problem

Actually, New Scientist did a story about this, maybe five years ago, which was worried about the bananas' genetic variation, but didn't have any specific threat attached. They pointed out that although the current banana plants is pretty hardy, they're cultivated by cloning, so there's very little capacity for adaptation there. I forget the details of the story, but it was something like "there may not be any bananas as we know them in 25 years". Now the threat actually exists...

Re:monoculture is a problem

And what do you think will happen when all rich countries will buy bananas from africa?

For the most part, they (we?) won't. Most varieties of Banana's are rather small and nasty. They're not the kind of thing your average westerner is likely to enjoy.

On the other hand, assuming they can find a variety of Banana which is easy to cultivate, resistant to this disease, AND tasty, then it'll be a huge boon to their economy. It could do more good for Africa than all the foreign aid of the last three decades combined.

300 Species, Probably Not All Susceptible

According to Banana.com [banana.com] there are over 300 different species of bananas, not all edible. I'm fairly certain that not all the edible species will be susceptibe to the blight. This might actually be a good thing in the long run as different species have different flavors and textures. They may even be better for us from a nutritional perspective than the Cavendish. The growers will need to adapt if the blight can't be stopped or contained.

Seriously people?

This story pops up every 6 months or so (I guess not here, but in general)... Has no one else heard about this banana scare story about 10 times before?? There's even a snopes article about it. Banana Extinction [snopes.com]

Re:Seriously people?

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.

Re:Seriously people?

but the only one eaten by americans is the cavendish

When I was in Bali I ate several different varieties of banana, and they were all much more tasty than the "bog-standard" Cavendish. So maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all.

Rich.

Read more carefully

Snopes basically said the exact same thing. The cavendish bananna will be extinct. Snopes is playing semantics by saying that all bananas won't be effected, but the only one eaten by americans is the cavendish, so yes, the bananna as we know it will be extinct. Just like the bananna your grandparents knew is already extinct.

Read more carefully. There's more than that in there.

The fungus discussed here grows in the earth, and spreads through earth. In fact, it is a problem _because_ it's in the ground, so you can't just spray the leaves with some fungicide.

So the only way this fungus could make the jump across the ocean to Latin America is either by

A) someone bringing an infected plant and planting it in the middle of a plantation, or

B) someone bringing a sack of infected earth and dumping it in a plantation. That's it, really.

And the cultivars _are_ aware of the threat, so they:

A) don't import any plants, but only clone plants which are known to be healthy. (They actually check, yes.) And

B) don't import soil from anywhere. And apparently the countries which depend on bananas for their economy, have special customs regulations to forbid exactly that.

Just about the only realistic scenario I can think of where that jump could happen, is, basically, an act of terror or sabotage. I.e., someone deliberately bringing some infected soil and spreading it around in Latin America. It could happen, I guess, but it's hardly something that the cultivars can do much about in advance.

At any rate, that's the failure point of the "OMG, it's spreading exponentially" scare. It can spread all it want somewhere else, as long as it can't cross the ocean by itself, it's even less of a threat to the Latin American plantation than Al Qaeda deciding to crash an airplane into a plantation.

Re:Read more carefully

> So the only way this fungus could make the jump across the ocean to Latin America is either by

> A) someone bringing an infected plant and planting it in the middle of a plantation, or

> B) someone bringing a sack of infected earth and dumping it in a plantation. That's it, really.

I think it is much easier than that. The fungus spread by insects like aphid. All it takes is a single one left alone in a container to somehow land in anywhere close to plantation to begin the spread of the disease.

Hmm.

Single, cloned fruit, unable to reproduce except by human intervention, with identical genetic structure in virtually all examples, cloned and distributed worldwide for decades is susceptible to the same attacking fungus that attacked the previous single, cloned fruit with identical genetic structure, but which has mutated slightly (my conjecture) in order to attack it's replacement.

And all because people don't like seeds in their fruit? (I would guess this isn't true, most probably people wouldn't really care much anyway, given that the fruit has an inedible skin too and a lot of popular fruits have seeds).

It's hardly surprising, it's only "catastrophic" because we've deliberately propogated a single, genetically-identical (and I would hazard "faulty", due to it's inability to reproduce) plant over and over and over again.

Re:Hmm.

One word: http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/pics/wildbanana.jpg [rotahall.org]

There's a reason modern bananas have been bred to be seedless.

One word?

Technically, that was worth a thousand words.

Will someone...

think of the monkeys !

Higher friction on the Gros Michel?

So, was granpa's banana more slippery? 'Cos that would explain their widespread use as comic devices in the pre-television era. (And, no, I never thought about asking Grandma about Granpa's banana, codenamed "Big Mike." Pervert.)

RTFA... There's actually more to it!

I know it's against the rules but if you RTFA the interesting part isn't about the blight spreading through the bananas. As others have posted this is not something that sprang up over night, it's been coming for quite a while now.

The truly interesting part is that the banana companies in S. America still don't see this as a problem. TFA says that in their anual summaries they don't even mention this disease much less list it as a threat. I think the issue is much more about these companies' failure to act before it's too late than that nature is running its course.

Finally we may get some variety ...

Having traveled in some tropical countries, one of the things I most remember about their fruits are the sheer NUMBER of different banana varieties. No monoculture. Your average roadside stand would have half a dozen varieties, and the one a mile down the road would have a few more. Tomorrow the mix would be different. And most of them would taste a lot better than the crap that's so widely available elsewhere!

I for one will welcome our new polycultural bananalords.

There's one problem

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.

What will happen to the dancing banana?

What other animated emoticon can I use to signal that I have an erection?

Gros Michel?

Is anyone else wondering what exactly it was about this Big Michael guy that caused someone to name a large and tasty banana after him...?

Re:Oh noes!

Slow news day? I think any story about a major threat to our food supply to be a major one, plus it mentions "Banana Scientists"! What is there not to love?

Re:Oh noes!

Exactly, how does extinction / loss of a food supply / mutating desease which have earlier almost killed a whole industry become small news? I would more likely find it the biggest news this day on Slashdot, time will tell.

I guess he just don't eat bananas.