We Are Losing the Banana Again
(CNN)50 years ago, we were eating better bananas.
They tasted improve, they lasted longer, they were more resilient and didn't crave bogus ripening. They were -- simply put -- a better fruit, because they belonged to a different species, or cultivar in assistant parlance.
It was chosen Gros Michel and it remained the globe'south consign assistant until 1965.
That year, information technology was declared commercially extinct due to the Panama affliction, a fungal disease that started out from Central America and quickly spread to virtually of the world's commercial banana plantations, leaving no other choice but to burn them down.
The assistant industry was in deep crunch, and had to look for alternatives. It settled with the Cavendish cultivar, which was deemed an inferior product simply carried the stardom of being immune to the disease. It was rapidly adopted by banana growers worldwide.
Today, the Cavendish is a universal foodstuff, much like a Big Mac: supermarket bananas are pretty much identical anywhere yous buy them.
That's because they have nearly no genetic diversity -- the plants are all clones of ane another. The Cavendish is a monoculture, which ways it'due south the only multifariousness that most commercial growers establish every year. Which is likewise why it is now under threat itself, from a new strain of the Panama disease. And one time it infects one plant, it tin infect them all.
Fifty years on, one of the near pop commercial foods in the earth is once once more under threat.
A threat to Africa
There are hundreds of assistant varieties in the world, but the Cavendish solitary accounts for nigh the totality of exports.
"Starting in the late 1980s, banana growers realized more diversity was needed to prevent the trouble from happening again. They were begging their bosses for information technology, simply it never happened," Dan Koeppel, author of the book "Banana: The fate of the fruit that changed the world," told CNN.
The disease now has a different name, "Tropical Race 4," and it started out in Malaysia around 1990, but it's otherwise very similar to the one that wiped out the Gros Michel: "It's caused by a really common type of fungus called Fusarium, which was probably already in the soil in that location. A single clamp of contaminated dirt is enough to spread it similar wildfire, and it can exist transported by wind, cars, water, creating an infection wherever it goes," explained Koeppel.
"Everyone who's e'er had athlete's foot knows how difficult it is to get rid of a fungus."
The pathogen affects the institute'southward vascular system, preventing information technology from picking up water.
Since its "2nd coming," TP4 has spread to S-eastern asia, and so across thousands of miles of open bounding main to Commonwealth of australia and finally, in 2013, to Africa.
"Its recent discovery in the Eye E and in Nampula, Mozambique, indicates that the disease is spreading and threatening bananas worldwide," George Mahuku, Senior plant pathologist for the International Institute of Tropical Agronomics, told CNN.
"It's a serious threat to livelihoods and food security in the Nampula province, country and the continent, should it spread. In Africa, bananas are critical for food security and income generation for more than 100 million people," he added.
Not simply the Cavendish
Even though the disease appears to have spread to simply ii plantations in Mozambique, the bear on on the local economy is already severe: "The disease has already toll Matanuska, the company that owns the plantations, about $vii.5 meg. A total of 230,000 plants have been affected and destroyed. At the current rate of infection, the farm is losing fifteen,000 plants per calendar week, translating to $236,000 per week," said Mahuku.
With Matanuska contributing over $1.5 1000000 per calendar month to the local economic system, the potential loss of livelihood is very real.
Mahuku's job is to coordinate efforts to boring down the disease, prompting collaboration from around 20 African countries: "The Eastward and Central Africa region has over 50% of its permanent crop area under assistant tillage. That'southward around half of the African full, with an annual product of twenty.ix 1000000 tonnes valued at $ 4.3 billion. Bananas are an indispensable part of life in this region providing upwardly to ane fifth of the total calorie consumption per capita. If TR4 were to spread into this region, the effects would exist unimaginable."
Many of these bananas are non Cavendish, just local varieties, or "village bananas," and they are also nether threat from the disease: "Preliminary results from evaluation of ix East African Highland bananas and plantains revealed that they tin can be infected with TR4. Only one cultivar remained illness gratis after eight months," said Mahuku.
There is besides an issue of consumer trust associated with the discovery of the disease, co-ordinate to Joao Augusto, a plant pathologist working with IITA in Mozambique: "I of the biggest threats is the negative perception that the residue of the globe may accept on perceived gamble of the African assistant. Although the spread of the pathogen through the fruit is almost nil, possible rejection of African banana exports could seriously damage the banana business in Africa."
Can it be stopped?
The disease is non more virulent than the one that killed the Gros Michel, but it's spreading because the bad practices from 50 years agone are still in identify: "The banana industry is in deprival well-nigh this, and standard agricultural quarantines like fencing the crops and cleaning the equipment are not enough," added Koeppel.
The just solution would be to burn the plantation downwards and outset over, just with a dissimilar crop. Restarting with bananas doesn't work because the fungus stays in the soil.
That, however, ways the end of the business: "I empathize growers don't want to throw the towel," Koeppel noted.
In Africa, a 12-month emergency project funded by FAO is underway to tackle TP4, and Mahuku is optimistic that the disease can be contained to the areas where it has been observed: "To attain this, financial resources are needed, otherwise inaction due to lack of resources will be catastrophic, specially for minor farmers who depend on bananas for their livelihoods," he said.
Co-ordinate to Augusto, there aren't many options to effectively command the disease: "It cannot exist eradicated, but information technology can be limited if a wide range of strong preventive and mitigation initiatives are put in place and rigorously implemented. In countries where the illness is owned, the assistant growers take learned to live with it."
Ultimately, history could well echo itself and prompt banana growers to look for a new alternative. There is no proficient candidate at the moment, but hybrids and GMOs are being considered.
The affliction is not the only trouble, though. Only equally the Cavendish is nether attack from the pathogen, local varieties are under attack from the Cavendish: "India had virtually 600 varieties, but over the past two decades the Cavendish has pushed out and replaced many of those. And when you replace a varied multiculture with a monoculture, if a disease happens, you lot're in trouble: nature comes back and bites you," said Koeppel.
"Monoculture to me is just as much a disease equally TP4," he added.
While variety has been embraced by most other vegetable and fruit industries, the Cavendish -- called "the hotel banana" in Republic of india -- is however the only assistant in town in virtually export markets.
Hopefully its authorisation won't lead to its downfall.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/africa/banana-panama-disease/index.html
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