Is That a Banana in Your ...

[marmar]

from Grist:



Slouching toward a bananapocalypse?

by Heather Smith
11 Nov 2011 1:00 PM


For years journalists have warned of imminent banana extinction. "Get bananas while you still can," wrote New Scientist over five years ago. "The world's most popular fruit ... is in deep trouble," it went on to say, adding that the banana would probably be out of supermarkets by 2013, and would soon exist only in backyard gardens and other places the Panama Race IV, a pathogen taking out plantations in Southeast Asia, couldn't reach.

But today -- just a few years from the banana's supposed demise -- one can walk down the street and find bananas in the nearest corner store, hanging out between the cash register and the lottery tickets. What gives? Are we still heading toward bananapocalypse? Or has it been cancelled? And what can the banana tell us about the evolution of our global food supply?

It turns out that the Race IV fungus does cause a true bananapocalypse. It just hasn't spread everywhere -- yet. Once it shows up on a farm, the land around it can't be used to grow the same variety for another 30 years. And, given that there's only one variety of banana -- the Cavendish -- that ships well enough and tastes good enough to be sold everywhere in the world, this is bad news for banana growers. The arrival of Race IV on your property is a sign that you've officially left the international banana trade.

But -- to use a horror movie analogy -- Race IV moves more like a zombie horde in a '70s movie than like the sleek, fast-moving zombies of today. In other words, smarter pathogens travel on insects (which can hop rides on ships and airplanes) or float on wind currents like Black sigatoka (the banana's main nemesis in the Americas), while Race IV travels by dirt, weeds, and water. Twenty years after the first plantations began to fail in Southeast Asia, the fungus has yet to be found in India and the Americas, which remain the most productive Cavendish growing regions in the world. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.grist.org/food/2011-11-11-slouching-toward-a-bananapocolypse

[midnight]

1. I love this fruit... Didn't know that the Bannana type I was most likely eating was

a Cavendish.

[Uben]

2. 49 cents a pound here

I eat 2 or 3 a week. My best friend is a produce manager for Walmart and he knows of no shortage. They keep shipping him pallets of bananas to sell, whether he wants them or not!

[MisterP]

3. I order you all to read John Soluri on bananas!

[MilesColtrane]

4. Bananas pwned Race IV.

They are radioactive.

They are sweet and nutritious.

They can be used as weapons AND sex toys.

Bananas rule.

Face it, the banana will inherit the Earth.