A future with no bananas?

theski · Post by **theski** » 2006-05-15 10:57am

This is not good..

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.

NS

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2006-05-15 11:26am

That really sucks.

Bananas are one of my favorite fruits.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-05-15 11:39am

Nooooooo! Where will we get banana cream pies from if they die out?

LaCroix · Post by **LaCroix** » 2006-05-15 11:46am

General Zod wrote:Nooooooo! Where will we get banana cream pies from if they die out?

No problem, they only contain artificial flavor...

Alex Moon · Post by **Alex Moon** » 2006-05-15 11:48am

LaCroix wrote:
General Zod wrote:Nooooooo! Where will we get banana cream pies from if they die out?
No problem, they only contain artificial flavor...

Those are abominations. Never speak of them again.

BloodAngel · Post by **BloodAngel** » 2006-05-15 11:55am

And you know no one is going to listen to this warning.

Bye bye bananas. I'll miss eating you.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-05-15 12:25pm

And the stupidity of mass clear-cutting for agriculture goes on. It's interesting how people are so keenly aware of the hazards of clear-cutting forests for wood and paper products, but so completely oblivious to the hazards of doing so to make way for farming.

Sofia · Post by **Sofia** » 2006-05-15 01:16pm

Damn! They were never my favorite fruit, but there's something very satisfying about a banana. Where will we get our potassium from? Enriched breakfast cereals?

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2006-05-15 01:20pm

As if that weren't enough. Now it turns out that half of the gene banks for the maize crop have been rendered useless by improper storage or freak accidents.

But, yep. Bananas are screwed. There is only one variety of banana that is cultivated on the planet, and it is cultivated via cutting (read: most every domestic banana plant grown in any quantity is a clone.) So they're all especially vulnerable to sweeping pandemics.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2006-05-15 01:43pm

Bananas are the most economically important fruit in the world. I'd actually be surprised, though, if anything were to happen to them.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-05-15 02:04pm

Master of Ossus wrote:Bananas are the most economically important fruit in the world. I'd actually be surprised, though, if anything were to happen to them.

If you're overfarming a crop that is located in pretty tight geographic areas, has a genetic bottleneck, and also has the misfortune of being susceptible to a big outbreak of a fungal pathogen, things don't look good. They'd have to implement some nice genetic engineering or fight the fungus. Good luck with either option, as they're not exactly easy tasks.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2006-05-15 02:23pm

Actually, I think heard about this a few years ago on a science show where they were talking about just this thing. They already apparently already had bananas that were immune to the fungal outbreaks but the farmers couldn't sell the damn things because they were *dun-dun-DUN* genetically engineered and thus a bunch of protesters raised a stink and the farmers were giving the option: lose most of your crop to plague or raise an expensive crop no one wants to buy. Now this is all off of memory from quite some time ago, but yeah, bananas have been in deep shit for years now.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-05-15 02:59pm

Of course, as a fellow of an organisation that promotes genetic tinkering, I shall laugh heartily as the organic fools learn that "playing God" doesn't just mean cheap food, but food that survives. I will also cry inside as banoffee pie and banana smoothies go extinct.

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2006-05-15 03:45pm

Not to worry, Kirk Cameron proves that god made the banana.

http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1684829/

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-05-15 04:23pm

Oh, that sucks. Not only because I really like bananas, but because there are alot of economies in the world that rely on bananas as a cash crop. If all their banana crops get destroyed, they are sunk in a messy way.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2006-05-15 04:40pm

Faram wrote:Not to worry, Kirk Cameron proves that god made the banana.

http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1684829/

Oh boy, that movie. A friend sent that to me a few weeks ago and I laughed my ass off at how stupid the guy was, because well, there is a very good reason why bananas are so great, and it ain't God. I would have loved to go up to that guy in the middle of his rant and say, "You do realize that wild bananas are damn near inedible and the modern banana is a product of thousands of artificial selection. All the pro-human qualities are there because HUMANS put them there."

Majin Gojira · Post by **Majin Gojira** » 2006-05-15 04:40pm

I hope that at least the carabian subspecies of Apple-Bannana's (Apple-sized banana's that taste sort of like apples) can make it through this...they're very sweet.

Man, this sucks. I love bannana's! At least someone caught it...so that maybe something can be done before the disaster hits...

Spetulhu · Post by **Spetulhu** » 2006-05-15 04:57pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Of course, as a fellow of an organisation that promotes genetic tinkering, I shall laugh heartily as the organic fools learn that "playing God" doesn't just mean cheap food, but food that survives. I will also cry inside as banoffee pie and banana smoothies go extinct.

I'd think people have been "playing God" already by crossbreeding the plant in order to get the type used on plantations. What's a little more of that game if it makes the fungus epidemic less of a threat?

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2006-05-15 05:00pm

Majin Gojira wrote:I hope that at least the carabian subspecies of Apple-Bannana's (Apple-sized banana's that taste sort of like apples) can make it through this...they're very sweet.

Man, this sucks. I love bannana's! At least someone caught it...so that maybe something can be done before the disaster hits...

The problem is that the plant's susceptibility to a massive fungal epidemic has been known for several years now. What's worse is that the fungus that would cause the epidemic is developing fungicide resistance (as major commercial growers make extensive use of fungicide to control the fungus when it appears.)

And bananas won't go entirely extinct. Fungal epidemics would only serve to ruin enough of the banana harvest that it won't be commercially viable to grow it, or sell it in the quantities demanded by the global markets. It would still be possible to have bananas, but one will expect to pay an absolutely absurd price for them.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2006-05-15 05:02pm

Spetulhu wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote:Of course, as a fellow of an organisation that promotes genetic tinkering, I shall laugh heartily as the organic fools learn that "playing God" doesn't just mean cheap food, but food that survives. I will also cry inside as banoffee pie and banana smoothies go extinct.
I'd think people have been "playing God" already by crossbreeding the plant in order to get the type used on plantations. What's a little more of that game if it makes the fungus epidemic less of a threat?

For some reason, people view crossbreeding as perfectly A-OK, but this is probably because that's the way we've been manipulating plant genes for thousands of years. However, when someone proposes to speed the process up and make it controlled through overt genetic engineering, some very vocal yahoos start screaming: "ZOMG UR PLAYING GOD!!!111"

CarsonPalmer · Post by **CarsonPalmer** » 2006-05-15 05:46pm

Yes, we have no bannanas, we have no bannanas today...

felineki · Post by **felineki** » 2006-05-15 05:54pm

Dang. I don't eat neraly enough fruits and vegetables, and bananas are one of the few that I will actually touch.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-05-15 08:22pm

O banana: ne'er again shall thy phallic shape reside atwixt our mouths.

Goddamnit, I'm going to go enjoy a banana right fucking now. Good day to you sirs.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2006-05-15 11:35pm

It'd be weird if one day i'm old and talking a little kid and he's amazed when i talk about how when i was his age, you could buy whole bundles of bananas at every corner shop. Or a kid pointing at the term 'banana republic' and saying 'what does that word mean?', or watching an old cartoon and not understanding what a banana peel is.

I've learnt a few things about bananas from this though. I didn't know we had a clone army with limited geneseed, which can only be saved from the resilient fungusoid horde by freeing the essence within a single Calcuttan plant.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2006-05-16 01:00am

Bananna's are not the only crop that uses a small or single number of species. I actually never knew weather banannas were from a seed or a cutting. I hope than a bannana blight does not come to pass because I too like them but my friends little boy goes ape shit over them and I want him to be happy and healthy.