Go Bananas While You Can

[barondave]

From New Scientist: A Future With No Bananas

Go bananas while you still can. The world's most popular fruit and the fourth most important food crop of any sort is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed.

Virtually all bananas traded internationally are of a single variety, the Cavendish, the genetic roots of which lie in India. Three years ago, New Scientist revealed that the world Cavendish crop was threatened by pandemics of diseases such as that caused by the black sigatoka fungus. The main hope for survival of the Cavendish lies in developing new hybrids resistant to the fungus, but this is a difficult and time-consuming task because the seedless modern fruit does not reproduce sexually and has to be bred from cuttings.

Now the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that wild banana species are rapidly going extinct as Indian forests are destroyed, while many traditional farmers' varieties are also disappearing. It could take a global effort to save the bananas' gene pool.

In fact many of the genes that could save the Cavendish may already have been lost, says NeBambi Lutaladio, a plant scientist at the FAO's headquarters in Rome, Italy. One variety that contains genes that resist black sigatoka survives as a single plant in the botanical gardens of Calcutta, he says.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

The Cavendish, what most Americans think of as "banana", is in peril. Even the snopes.com article agrees, confining their disagreement to the suggestion that all bananas are in danger. There are many bananas varieties, but the New Scientist article is about the one most people have at their table.

How often do you eat anything but a Cavendish? I can, offhand, only think of twice in the past year when I've had anything but a standard Cavendish, and once was at the State Fair.

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

But they also say on Snopes that the Cavendish will still likely be around for the rest of our lifetimes...

"Therefore, despite the seriousness of the threat posed by Race 4, it looks like bananas as a whole and even the species we're now best accustomed to are going to be with us for a long time."

[barondave.livejournal.com]

You'll notice that the snopes.com article is refuting the claims made on a radio program, which they trace a New Scientist article from January 2003. The New Scientist article I cited, from May 2006 doesn't say that the Cavendish will disappear, but cites a UN Food and Agricultural Organization report saying many banana species, especially the Cavendish, are in peril.

Snopes.com is a good site and does fine work, but doesn't cover all the bases and trusts its readers to use the information properly. Snopes himself is a pathological liar who delights in people tripping over themselves to disprove is obviously incorrect statements. Accuracy is good; precision is also good.