http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030115/sc_nm/food_banana_dc_1
This news bit was really missing a lot of info IMO, what is the deal here? It is the banana really that weak against disease and pests? Why that timeline of ten years?
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Many cultivated crops cannot survive in the wild without humans assisting them, bananas are no exception. For every abandoned apple orchard that hangs on year after year, there are probably a dozen abandoned peach orchards and U-Pick raspberry farms and vineyards that simply disappear into the weeds after about 10 years.
Many of the characteristics that make plants able to survive on their own are characteristics that make the plant less desirable to humans, like seedheads that drop their seeds all over the place when they’re ripe, which is what wild grain does, rather than hang onto it tightly so it can be harvested, as humans would prefer. So humans select for grain that holds onto its seedheads, but then the grain can’t reproduce by itself any more.
And many of the characteristics that make plants desirable to humans, like a heavy investment in fruit, also make plants vulnerable to insects and disease. Plants that are putting so much energy into making a lot of fruit or seeds don’t have much to spare for fighting off disease, so when the humans stop helping them fight off bugs, they can’t do it by themselves and they pack it in.
i read an article on yahoo.com yesterday about the whole banana crisis, basically there is a belgian scientist who is saying that bananas are not reproducing themselves anymore. there is no banana sex these days (i didnt know that there used to be, but there you have it…) and bananas now have weak inbred genes that make them more prone to disease. this guy is saying that without scientific intervention, they’ll be gone in 10 years.
http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=us&cat=farming_and_agriculture
Jeez, if we can clone sheep, why can’t we clone bananas?
Yahoo’s banana story was extracted from this weeks New Scientist cover story. It’s not on the internet, but any half-decent library should have a copy.
Emile Frison’s organization, International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain, has assembled a library of banana diversity. The article likely reflects their concern over its small size. There does seem to be a push for the creation of “Frankenbananas”.
The report I saw this morning on NBC singled out one of the most popular of the varieties of bananas, supposedly very commonly sold in England. Banana varieties cultivated by humans do not reproduce via seeds, but via cuttings (basically). So they have very little genetic variance between the plants - think Irish potato famine (one variety of potato gets wiped out by a disease, IIRC) for a potential result.
This is one of the reasons behind a push towards uncommon (also known as “antique” and other descriptions) varieties of different crops. It helps increase genetic diversity. Many farmers rely on common, known-producer (and seller) varieties of crops, which would be vulnerable if some disease would come along which it is not resistant to.
The farmer’s market in Madison, WI used to (and may still have) a seller that marketed their “antique apples” - they had a dozen or more apple varieties/hybrids, and each had a sign describing their taste and some history of the variety, how far back it can be traced, and so forth. Delicious apples, but some had characteristics like small size which would not make them a favorite to be mass-marketed. I bought them as often as I could when I lived there.
On the chance you’re not being facetious, bananas do not, in general, reproduce sexually. They are vegetatively propagated. Therefore, banana plants are clones. This is not to say that all bananas are identical. There are different cultivars (varieties) of banana, each of which is a different clone.
Therein lies the problem: every individual in a cultivar is identical to every other individual. They all have the same characteristics, including susceptibility to disease and insects. One moderately aggressive bug could cause an epidemic that would wipe them all out. The classic example of this is the Irish Potato Famine, where a single cultivar of potato was being grown in Ireland. These potatoes were all clones of each other, and were all susceptible to Phytophthora infestans, the fungus that causes potato late blight disease.
I read the New Scientist story yesterday, being in the business. Cavendish Bananas are triploids, having sets of three chomosomes instead of two. They cannot sexually reproduce the way most plants can. The seeds were bred out to make the fruit more edible way way back in murky history. The ‘Gros Michel’ variety dominated the western marketplace up until the Panama Disease, a soil-borne disease, effectively wiped it out about 40-45 years ago. The Cavendish, resistant to Panama Disease, replaced the ‘Gros Michel’, and is what is almost guaranteed to be sitting on your supermarket shelf right now.
There is a new (found in 1965) variety of the Panama Disease (called Race 4), which does affect the Cavendish variety, but it is more prevalent in the Sub Tropics, not the Tropics. Its survivability is dependant on soil conditions. The folks behind that article (Frison) used sensationalism to promote their research in Genetically Modified produce. The Big Three producers are generally avoiding funding GM research, due to the public mistrust of GM foods, so these guys flame up the sensationalist newspaper headlines to garner support.
Other resistant commercially viable varieties exist right now, but taste different, more of an apple flavoring, and they have not met with overwhelming support by the public.
You will be able to buy bananas in ten years.
Thanks everybody! UncleBill, I imagined it was just like that.