Bye, bye, bananas

[WhiteTara]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/04/the-worlds-most-popular-banana-could-go-extinct/

In the mid 1900s, the most popular banana in the world—a sweet, creamy variety called Gros Michel grown in Latin America—all but disappeared from the planet. At the time, it was the only banana in the world that could be exported. But a fungus, known as Panama Disease, which first appeared in Australia in the late 1800s, changed that after jumping continents. The disease debilitated the plants that bore the fruit. The damage was so great and swift that in a matter of only a few decades the Gros Michel nearly went extinct.

Now, half a century later, a new strain of the disease is threatening the existence of the Cavendish, the banana that replaced the Gros Michel as the world's top banana export, representing 99 percent of the market, along with a number of banana varieties produced and eaten locally around the world.

And there is no known way to stop it—or even contain it.

snip

The reason the original disease and its latest permutation are so threatening to bananas is largely a result of the way in which we have cultivated the fruit. While dozens of different varieties are grown around the world, often in close proximity to one another, commercially produced bananas are all the same (quite literally in fact, because they are effectively clones of each other).

we are so short sighted and fixated on the immediate bottom line.

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. scary

[TwilightGardener]

2. Bye bye citrus, too (citrus greening disease).

[Warpy]

3. Cavendish bananas are pretty tasteless

For really flavorful bananas, try the fingering varieties often sold at health food stores and ethnic groceries. My favorites are the ruby reds but all taste better than the bland Cavendish. Colors vary from a bluish grey to pink to taxicab yellow.

[underpants]

4. They plan for this -the one great banana

The next variety ready to be mass produced will be called the Goldfinger I believe it is called

[WhiteTara]

6. good to know that there is preplanning

for the wipeout of one species with the next monocrop.

[Old Codger]

5. The same problem

Exists in most of our commercially grown crops...too much the same and a lot of them are now grown from such hybrids that they don't even produce a viable seed themselves...