Disease Threatens 99% of the Banana Market (washingtonpost.com) 199
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 don't see it man (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't see it man (Score:4, Interesting)
More than that actually. The bananas are better he (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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
Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:5, Interesting)
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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
Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:5, Funny)
If 'tree ripened" isn't a hipster fad already, I suspect it soon will be.
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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 ar
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SHUT UP!
We've got too many people living up here already.
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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.
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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 ins
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"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.
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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
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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 "ignora
Artificial Banana Flavouring (Score:3)
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
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I've had them. Gros Michael is good, but I don't think it is better or worse that Cavendish, just different, and while I can only speak from my own experience I don't think it tastes like artificial banana flavoring. But different people like different things; maybe Gros Michael is the best variety for some people. My personal favorite variety is Pisang Awak (followed by Muraru), now there's a variety that it is a real shame isn't more widely available.
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Whenever I travel to Hawaii, I buy a bunch of Apple Bananas. They have slight apple flavor to them. Unfortunately, you can't get them on the mainland.
Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:5, Funny)
Except it all tries to kill you.
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It's a wonder that there are any humans left in Australia.
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It's a wonder that there are any humans left in Australia.
Australia may be dangerous, but humans are much moreso.
The humans that are left in Australia . . . (Score:2)
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. . . appear to believe in "drop bears."
It's called humor friend.
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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.
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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
Re:More than that actually. The bananas are better (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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 yea
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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
Re: More than that actually. The bananas are bette (Score:3)
Cavendish is tasteless ... (Score:5, Informative)
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
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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
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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 w
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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.
The Cavendish is fine - more would be welcome (Score:2)
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
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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 t
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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 natur
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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 tho
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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.
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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 mann
Go ask folks in Indonesia / Malaysia (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Go ask folks in Indonesia / Malaysia (Score:4, Informative)
Bananas aren't really trees; they're monocots more related to grasses than what one usually considers "trees". Their stems don't even deserve to be called trunks - they're not woody, and they grow from a corm that sends up multiple shoots, like grasses. The only reason some people call them trees is because they're big and their stems are thick.
There actually is one grouping of woody monocot "trees" - the palms - but their "wood" is very different from that of dicots (there's no heartwood, no growth rings, or anything of that nature). You can see a closeup of a chopped-down coconut tree here [wikipedia.org] - while it's clearly "woody", it's also clearly not a normal wood - just lignin-toughened vascular bundles. Still very useful for most wood purposes though, and IMHO rather attractive [google.is]. Eco-friendly, too, because trees old on coconut plantations have to be chopped down and replanted (they stop bearing fruit), and they produce copious amongs of wood during their lifespan that has long been considered more of a waste product than a resource.
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It has 4WD and a two-speed transfer box?
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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
Unless it didn't happen that way.
Re:I don't see it man (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in Asia and the bananas look fine to me.
Well, they might not for long - but depends on where you are looking and what you are looking for.
The problem with bananas is that the so called desirable ones are the seedless varieties, and they reproduce by corms - Gros Michel bananas are genetically identical to each other, and so are the Cavendish. Any disease that kills one plant will kill all of them.
If we want seeds, we don't have to worry as much about pathogens.
People never learn from History (Score:3)
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/... [wikipedia.org]
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*
Re:People never learn from History (Score:5, Insightful)
If you depend on a single type of crop, it's very hard to diversify.
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A fair point in some cases, however, this particular strain hits most types of cultivated bananas. Even if the banana export market diversified away from Cavendish to include some of the many other varieties, this would still be a problem.
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"And when will they do to resolve this?"
The day we resolve capitalism.
It is easy to ask "them" to resolve a problem but, what would *you* do?
Let's say you can choose between two cultures: one renders you X$ per investment unit while other renders your X+Y$ per unit. You are not stupid so you choose the one that produces you the more. Who could blame you for that? And then, everybody else do the same and we end up with a monoculture.
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The capitalists already have a solution for that problem, as it comes up very often, for instance, when picking investments based on information that is little more than current stock price, recent earnings, and historical dividend.
The answer has been to distribute your investment across multiple investments. Possibly weighted a bit towards the most profitable, but re-balancing periodically to prevent having too much exposure to risk in any single place.
My local farms don't grow bananas, and although they a
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"Who could blame you for that?"
"Me."
No: you do blame him. You can't blame him.
In other news: stupid Anonymous Cowards behave stupidly.
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Will they, then, be solely responsible when the next blight comes along to destroy that crop, I wonder?
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A single corporation owning one of the most popular food products with no competition?
Only for twenty years, then there's nothing stopping banana producers from doing whatever they want.
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Probably not millions. But many livelihoods will be destroyed as there are many many people who a dependant on the banana crops.
But my point is still valid - recent history (only about 150 years ago) shows us that millions _did_ die because of reliance on a single species of a crop. And the cause of that _was_ the reliance on a single species. Yet we still rely in single species (or a small number of species) in just about everything we grow commercially.
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Bananas form a substantial part of the diet in certain parts of the world, particularly Africa. In developed countries it is a 'just' fruit; elsewhere it is more of a staple. So, yes, this could be pretty bad.
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Banana (plants) can, and do, sexually reproduce. They're just full of seeds and not particularly nice to eat.
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What I mean is the seedless banana which the human eat
Actually seedless bananas are mutants - if you go to the forest in Indonesia / Malaysia there are varieties of banana - edible, but filled with seeds
The 'mutant' seedless banana which the human eat can not reproduce 'sexually' - they produce their offsprings by 'cloning' (natural cloning), all shooting up from the same network of root
Why would a "seeded" banana be difficult to eat? I'm not a banana expert, but the things that look like soft, immature seeds in a typical supermarket banana are all packed in the center. It's easy to nibble around them, much like how you'd eat an apple.
Re:Banana is different (Score:5, Informative)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Decades? Really? (Score:3)
This is not the 1950s. The current state of bioengineering is far more advanced than the 1950s.
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I am sure someone will work out a gene therapy or countermeasure to the disease by then.
Oh, wonderful . . . we'll all be dependent on Monsanto Bananas.
Hey, wait . . . Monsanto developed the "more virulent strain of the disease", with all their genetic engineering prowess and is spreading it around . . . ?
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Well,while those advances are real and significant, we do also have people actively working to keep those advances from being utilized. Wouldn't want to tamper with the genetics of a seedless man made fruit, which often has an extra set of chromosomes, and sometimes is a hybrid with a parent that has banana streak virus integrated naturally into its genome...nope, wouldn't want to mass with that picture of biological integrity.
As it stands right now, it looks like the most promising research is the use of
Re:Decades? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like a overblown crisis. If it will take decades to be an issue, I am sure someone will work out...
Ah, the old "meh, let the children figure it out" line.
Like I've never seen this line of thinking when an environmental issue came up...
Re: Decades? Really? (Score:2, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/story/102169 for those that wish to verify.
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Well the story itself it a dupe from it's appearance on Slashdot, but this iteration of the story is linked to a recent story in the news.
You can write to Mr. Roberto A. Feldman about recycling old news and hoping is bosses don't catch him slacking off.
Options (Score:5, Informative)
Wild non-cultivated bananas are pretty much all seed and wouldn't make a very desirable alternative: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
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
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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
Actually, these two points are one points for the people for whom bananas are a staple food. It's no problem for them to switch to another banana because there's a crapload of different kinds of banana, most of them will grow in most of the places where people depend on them, and they don't have to present their bananas to a store so they don't have to ship well... which is what rules out most of those varieties for sale in most of the world.
A small price to pay... (Score:2)
... to destroy every last Bananaphone! [youtube.com]
Save the bananas (Score:3)
Well, considering it has been almost a decade since this story last appeared here
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
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.
I fail to see the problem (Score:2)
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.
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The Cavendish banana is sterile.
Citrus is going out the door too--ALL citrus (Score:5, Interesting)
At least there are some varieties of banana that are resistant to this strain of Panama disease.
Citrus greening:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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/... [nbcnews.com]
(A swipe at nature nutjobs, "natural" doesn't mean "good" every time--citrus might be better if it didn't cause cancer, right?)
--PeterM
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If the psyllid that spreads the pathogen has spread to the U.S. then it's an invasive species and couldn't we just release some genetically engineered males or females that produce sterile offspring and mostly decimate the population?
I know there are promising pilot programs that do that for mosquitoes.
Honestly, the hate against GMO as a concept is weird given that all of modern agriculture is basically genetic engineering through trial and error of a very inefficient method of creating mutations.
Nothing we
Old news is best news? (Score:4, Informative)
Monoculture (Score:2)
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Unfortunately, several varieties of something isn't always a protection. Citrus greening is wiping out all citrus, not just a single variety.
--PM
Again? (Score:2)
Old news (Score:2)
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On slashdot, every day is a slow news day.
sensationalist bullshit (Score:3)
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.
Banana central stem tastes delicious. (Score:3)
How long the fungus lives without banana? (Score:3)
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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.
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nonsense, go to an asian grocery store. there are many, many types of bananas
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Found one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foo... [telegraph.co.uk]
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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 fel
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"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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"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 s