Popular Science Can This Fruit Be Saved?

"That sameness is the banana’s paradox. After 15,000 years of human cultivation, the banana is too perfect, lacking the genetic diversity that is key to species health. What can ail one banana can ail all. A fungus or bacterial disease that infects one plantation could march around the globe and destroy millions of bunches, leaving supermarket shelves empty.

A wild scenario? Not when you consider that there’s already been one banana apocalypse.""

"A global effort is now under way to save the fruit—an effort defined by two opposing visions of how best to address the looming crisis. On one side are traditional banana growers, like Aguilar, who raise experimental breeds in the fields, trying to create a replacement plant that looks and tastes so similar to the Cavendish that consumers won’t notice the difference. On the other side are bioengineers like Rony Swennen, who, armed with a largely decoded banana genome, are manipulating the plant’s chromosomes, sometimes crossing them with DNA from other species, with the goal of inventing a tougher Cavendish that will resist Panama disease and other ailments."

Plant Health Progress Panama Disease: A Classic and Destructive Disease of Banana

"Prior to 1960, the export trade was based almost entirely on the susceptible clultivar ‘Gros Michel.’ This reliance on Gros Michel and the common practice of using infected rhizomes to establish new plantations resulted in widespread and severe losses, especially in the western tropics. In the Ulua Valley of Honduras alone, 30,000 hectares were lost between 1940 and 1960. Damage occurred more rapidly in areas such as Suriname, where an entire operation of 4,000 hectares was out of production within 8 years, and the Quepos area in Costa Rica, where it took 12 years for 6,000 hectares to be destroyed. Because it cost between $2,000 and $5,000 to establish a hectare of plantation at the time, direct losses during the Gros Michel era reached many millions of dollars.

By the mid-1900s, the export trade was forced to convert to resistant cultivars in the Cavendish subgroup. These cultivars continue to perform well in the western tropics and remain the clones on which the trades are based."

Environmental History Accounting for taste: Export bananas, mass markets, and Panama disease

"This essay seeks to explain why the major fruit companies operating in Central America and the Caribbean delayed in converting to Panama disease-resistant varieties for nearly fifty years. I argue that the industry's response to the epidemic is best understood by focusing on the interactions between the banana's biology, the agroecology of tropical monocultures, and the structures, actors, and discourses that shaped international mass markets. In order to do so, I utilize an analytical framework inspired by two distinct yet complementary approaches to doing environmental history: agroecology and the study of commodity flows."

San Francisco Chronicle Without a genetic fix, the banana may be history

"We westerners love bananas, but we won't go hungry if they disappear. They taste good in daiquiris and smashed into a baby's mush. The most profitable export fruit in the world, bananas earn $12 billion for Chiquita, Dole and other companies growing crops in South America and Africa.

For the poor in developing nations, however -- more than 400 million people, from Honduras and Cuba to Uganda, Ethiopia and the Philippines -- the banana and plantain are major food staples. They consume 9 of 10 bananas and plantains, 90 million metric tons annually."

For the poor in developing nations, however -- more than 400 million people, from Honduras and Cuba to Uganda, Ethiopia and the Philippines -- the banana and plantain are major food staples. They consume 9 of 10 bananas and plantains, 90 million metric tons annually."

New Agrculturist Points of View: The future of bananas

"An excellent source of carbohydrate, fibre, vitamins and minerals, bananas are the fourth most valuable food in developing countries after rice, wheat and milk. Indeed in Uganda, where bananas are consumed in the largest quantities, the local word 'matooke' means 'food'. In exports, it also ranks fourth amongst all agricultural commodities and is traded in greater quantities than any other fruit at a total of $2.5 billion annually. And yet, only 10% of global production is destined for international markets - the rest is consumed at local or national level. In recent years, pests and disease have plagued bananas. Black Sigatoka disease is renowned for the damage it is has done and it is controlled only in commercial plantations by frequent application of fungicides. But other pests and diseases also impact on this curvaceous commodity. In January 2003, New Scientist reported that 'the world's favourite fruit is about to disappear'. In response, New Agriculturist, asked those connected with the crop, for their Points of View on the future of bananas."

Snopes.Com Claim: Bananas will be extinct within ten years.

"Once again, the ecological doomsday bell has been set to tolling, this time by folks fearful of the imminent demise of our favorite fruit, the banana. In January 2003, a report in New Scientist suggested bananas could well disappear within ten years thanks to two blights: black Sigatoka, a leaf fungus, and Panama disease, a soil fungus which attacks the roots of the plant. Those claims have since been disputed.

Banana aren't about to be swept from the face of the earth by a deadly pestilence poised to wipe them out. There are about 300 varieties of the fruit, and the current fear applies to only one of them, the Cavendish. Granted, the Cavendish is our banana of choice, but it isn't the only banana out there. Even if the Cavendish were lost to us, we would still not be singing "Yes, We Have No Bananas.""