Bananas Have Died Out Once Before

[turbinetree]

Modern bananas are a monoculture. It’s only a matter of time before some bug or fungus strikes, and many experts believe that strike is coming very soon.
Aeon

Jackie Turner

You probably take bananas for granted. In the United Kingdom, one in four pieces of fruit consumed is a banana and, on average, each Briton eats 10 kg of bananas per year; in the United States, that’s 12 kg, or up to 100 bananas. When I ask people, most seem to think bananas grow on trees. But they don’t, in either the literal or the figurative sense: in fact, they’re in danger of extinction.

I knew almost nothing about bananas when I landed in Costa Rica in 2011. I was a young scientist from the University of Michigan on a scholarship to study abroad, with fantasies of trapping and identifying tropical fish in pristine rainforest streams. But the institute I was enrolled at brought us to a banana plantation, and from the moment I set foot on the dense, dark clay beneath that endless green canopy, my fish fantasy evaporated. I became fascinated by the fruit I found growing on large, towering herbs, lined up in rows in their tens of thousands.

Bananas are one of the oldest known cultivated plants, but were first grown in the United States in the 1880s, by entrepreneurs involved in early plantations in Jamaica. This new fruit was odd-looking, originally with seeds, and would grow only in very particular tropical climates. For years, the fruit was an unreliable product due to its short ripening period; storms at sea or delayed trains meant that these early banana salesmen would often open shipping crates full of rotten, unsellable fruit. But as advances in transportation and refrigeration shortened the time it took to bring bananas to market, they rose in popularity, cleverly marketed as a grocery staple, a fruit for the whole family.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/bananas-have-died-out-once-before?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[Polybius]

1. I'd go crazy without them

What would I put in my yogurt?

[USALiberal]

3. Blueberries :-)

[NutmegYankee]

2. This is a classic case for GMO or CRISPR.

We can splice in or activate the genes needed to fight the fungus from a natural variety and avoid decades of cross breeding to make a viable banana.

https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=18606

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researcher Distinguished Professor James Dale and his team have successfully developed a line of Cavendish bananas resistant to Panama disease tropical race 4 (TR4).

Professor Dale said the field trials showed that high expression of the gene RGA2 derived from a wild banana provides resistance to TR4 disease. RGA2 is also present in Cavendish but it is not expressed. The development of the TR4 resistant line has led to a partnership with US-based international fresh fruit and vegetable leader, Fresh Del Monte, which would enable the researchers to use the gene editing tool CRISPR to develop a non-genetically modified variety of Cavendish that will also be resistant to TR4.

TR4 is caused by a fungus that survives in the soil for more than 40 years. This catastrophic disease leads to diminished crops across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa and in 2019 was found in Colombia in Latin America, the region which accounts for about 85% of the world's export bananas.

[malaise]

4. I eat 365 ripe bananas a year - one a day

plus many boiled green ones or green banana chips.
And yes between the hurricanes and the bugs, the banana plant is always under threat.

[CousinIT]

5. Bananas, chocolate, coffee - all threatened by climate change.

But humans will continue to ignore the issue.

[Hortensis]

8. :) Otoh, if it really was ignored, how would WE know anything about it? nt

[nilram]

11. Stupid humans. I am glad to be a robot.

I am glad DU does not require me to prove myself with every post. Ha. Ha. D. U.
Robot.

[Dream Girl]

6. Banana used to be delicious. I dislike how they have gotten "tangy" in taste. The texture is

Different too. Kind of slimy and chalky.

[FakeNoose]

7. I think it's happening because they're picked green and unripe

The bananas (and other fruit) actually ripen in corrugated boxes en route to the stores. For some fruit it really affects their flavor.

[Aristus]

9. They've been predicting the downfall of the Cavendish for twenty years now.

Hasn't happened yet, and with luck, it won't. But I would like to see an end to banana monoculture, and monoculture in general.

I once sampled some delicious apple bananas in Hawaii. I'd like to try more varieties if they were readily available.

Same with the potato. We're all familiar with the Idaho, the russet, and the golden potato. But there are about thirty-seven varieties of potato, some of which are even purple in color! To Hell with monoculture...

[Hortensis]

10. Good thing is, this isn't news in the world of agriculture/ag business,

or even in the world of banana eaters like my husband, who of course devoutly hope enough growers switch to new varieties in time to keep them from having to chop apples on their cereal until they do. I haven't read up so wouldn't be willing to bet anything I didn't care to lose on not having to refuse to pay boutique prices for bananas until the supply problem was fixed.

It'll be especially hard on banana consumers living at subsistence levels in banana latitudes if it happens, of course.

Other good news, though, is that extinction is not a possibility in this era when the same kind of avanced science is being brought to food supply issues as to stopping deadly viruses.