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Bye Bye Bananas — the Return of Panama Disease
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jun 02, 2008 05:43 AM
from the where-you-gonna-get-your-potassium dept.
from the where-you-gonna-get-your-potassium dept.
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..."
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Look on the bright side of... (Score:5, Funny)
monoculture is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:monoculture is a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:monoculture is a problem (Score:5, Informative)
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
Parent
Re:monoculture is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:monoculture is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:monoculture is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
300 Species, Probably Not All Susceptible (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously people? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously people? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is less to do on bananas going extinct then rather trying to sell GM crops to the public.
Parent
Re:Seriously people? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Read more carefully (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Read more carefully (Score:5, Informative)
> 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.
Parent
Hmm. (Score:5, Informative)
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. (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason modern bananas have been bred to be seedless.
Parent
One word? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Will someone... (Score:5, Funny)
Higher friction on the Gros Michel? (Score:5, Funny)
RTFA... There's actually more to it! (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
What will happen to the dancing banana? (Score:5, Funny)
Gros Michel? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess he just don't eat bananas.
Parent