Existence of commercial bananas threatened by disease — and there is no known way to stop it
Existence of commercial bananas threatened by disease — and there is no known way to stop it
By Washington Post December 4, 2015
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 per cent of the market, along with a number of banana varieties produced and eaten locally around the world. MAnd there is no known way to stop it — or even contain it.
That’s the troubling conclusion of a new study published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, which confirmed something many agricultural scientists have feared to be true: that dying banana plants in various parts of the world are suffering from the same exact thing, Tropical Race 4, a more potent mutation of Panama Disease.
Specifically, the researchers warn that the strain, which first began wreaking havoc in Southeast Asia some 50 years ago and has more recently spread to other parts of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Australia, will eventually make its way to Latin America, where the vast majority of the world’s exported bananas are still grown. At this point, they say, it’s not a question of whether Tropical Race 4 will infiltrate the mothership of global banana production; it’s a matter of when.
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Cavendish bananas are the fruits of banana cultivars belonging to the Cavendish subgroup of the AAA cultivar group. The same term is also used to describe the plants on which the bananas grow.
They include commercially important cultivars like 'Dwarf Cavendish' and 'Grand Nain'. Since the 1950s, these cultivars have been the most internationally traded bananas, replacing the Gros Michel banana after crops of the latter were devastated by Panama disease.
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Cavendish bananas entered mass commercial production in 1903 but did not gain prominence until later when Panama disease attacked the dominant Gros Michel ("Big Mike"variety in the 1950s. Because they were successfully grown in the same soils as previously affected Gros Michel plants, many assumed the Cavendish cultivars were more resistant to Panama disease. Contrary to this notion, in mid-2008, reports from Sumatra and Malaysia suggest that Panama disease is starting to attack Cavendish-like cultivars.[6]
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Diseases
Because cultivated bananas are propagated by conventional vegetative reproduction rather than through sexual reproduction, each of the Cavendish clones are genetically identical and cannot evolve disease resistance. As there is currently no effective fungicide against Panama disease, some have speculated about a future where Cavendish cultivars are not usable for farming. In such a scenario, a separate cultivar may be developed as a replacement (as happened with the Gros Michel).
Just business as usual in the banana industry. But banana splits may become more expensive for a while waiting for the new cultivar to be developed and tested and for all the existing plantations to be converted. Maybe everyone should switch to...oh, blueberries in the interim...just a suggestion...
