Bananas not on verge of extinction says FAO.

Plant pathologists unpeel rumors of banana extinction.

Basically, the head of the banana genome project expressed alarm to a science journalist about the future of the banana, and it was turned into this extinction-in-a-decade soundbite.

Hmm, Frankenbananas might be as successful as Frankenpotatoes.

Works like this: develop single-gene resistance to the disease and engineer that crop. Sell it until it fails in a few years (single-gene resistance is brittle). Keep developing single-gene resistance traits like this until you run out. Then cry about lost profits.

The blight that caused the potato famine is still with us and slowing beating down the potato growers worlwide. Had they instead worked on multi-gene resistance and multiple-variety plantings, it wouldn't be this bad.

If they gengineer bananas then Dole will be subservient to the interests of Dow / Monsanto / Conagra / ADM. I bet it galls those the bio-chem guys that such a huge food crop is controlled by a small number of organizations that aren't them.

I don't eat bananas much because I saw how Dole was screwing entire countries in the Carribbean when I worked there.

Edited by author 07-22-2003 05:00 PM
Charlie - I looked and couldn't find the article, but I remember reading it as well. Maybe it was in another site?
Also interesting from July 01 - "Banana genome to be unravelled"
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991037

"But because interbreeding is impossible, genetic modification is the only way to insert such genes into most commercial varieties. "This is one of the few crops where you could say there's a strong justification for using GM," Frison says. "

This reads -- at least the extract -- alarmingly similarly to a feature in New Scientist about two or three months ago. If I could be arsed doing the legwork (and had access to NS's archives) I might be having some words to say to their editor ...

Cavendish bananas, from what I know, grow on dwarf trees, hence
I guess being called a pygamy in Brazil.

But fear not for the Cavendish - a major US food crop would
never be allowed to succumb to pests these days. That's what
the genetic engineers are here for, even if this artile tries
to spin it the other way.

Frankenbanana is in our future.

Edited by author 07-22-2003 01:22 PM
I lived in Bangladesh for a year and was introduced to literally dozens of different banana varieties. One tasted more like pinapple, one, the Iticala, a favorite in Chittagong had seed pits the size of peanut M&Ms. Personally as much as I consume the standard banana served in the US, it always makes me uncomfortable guessing the effect such extreme mono-cropping have on the Central American lands they are produced on. (And I won't even go into the chemical/pesticide/fertilizer devistation caused by the non-organic growers....oooops too late ;)

I'm here to back up Luiz. Brazil (and Thailand and Vietnam) has a great variety of different types of bananas, many of which I personally think are better (in texture, sweetness and smell) than the standard US/EU banana. They don't seem to have any trouble distributing them, selling them or eating them in large quantities.

I do not know anything about the details of banana cultivation: whether it's intensive monoculture or closer to wild growth (I suspect the former) but I can see that our standard bananas have to satisfy several criteria: they have to respond well to picking while still unripe, so that they can endure long travel/storage/sheft lives, they need to be reasonably uniform, because supermarket customers have been shown to respond well to uniform size and colour in products, I understand they're straighter than other varieties because this facilitates packing and they're unusually resistant to rough handling. All of these considerations come before the subjective judgement of how they taste or what their mouthfeel is like.

I can easily imagine that there is no other variety of banana out there that does all these things as well as the Cavendish - but consider: supermarkets are willing to ship all sorts of other fruits that don't travel as well and have shorter shelf lives. They tend to be a little more expensive and some of them are more seasonal, but they still find their way to us. It might be that the demise of the Cavendish will actually lead to more varieties of banana becoming available to Western (or Northern) consumers, at a slightly higher price, fresher and closer to ripeness, with an overall increase in quality, quite possibly grown by smaller cultivators. That doesn't sound so bad to me.

Or some single giant vat-grown banana they prune with a sword into convenient single-serving pieces.

I've heard this several times in the past couple years, and it just seems impossible for me to imagine a bananaless existence. The thought that I might never have another peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich seems positively dystopian to me.

Surely some sort of genetically modified voodoo or special growing techniques will save the fruit. The alternative is unthinkable.

Edited by author 07-21-2003 06:32 PM
Dear Cory,

I disagree with the part on which it is described the banana varieties available in tropical countries.

Here in Brazil there are available in the market, that I can remember, five most common different banana varieties. I don't know if there is an equivalent in US for each type, but I will try to summarize below:

- The banana variety that mostly resembles the description in the article (fibrous and mealy and not very sweet) is the "banana da terra" (in english it might be (very roughly) translated into "native banana"). Do not try to eat it raw (it has a horrible taste). It should be first cooked or fried. The scientific name of its species is "Musa paradisiaca"

The other four types are very sweet, smooth textured and differ by their size and taste (I might be forgetting one or two less common varieties).

- "Banana Ouro" (or golden banana, again in a very poor english translation): very small (about 10 cm), very sweet (in my opinion, the sweetest) and has a golden-colored pulp (thereby the name), but not as soft as the other varieties (with the exception of the "banana da terra");

- "Banana Prata" (or "Silver banana"): slightly smaller than the cavendish, and almost as sweet.

- "Banana Maçã" (or "Apple banana"): this is the most common variety in Brazil, and by its description I believe that it is the "Gros Michel" cited in the article. Very sweet and smooth.

The last type is the Cavendish, known in Brazil as "Banana Nanica", or in a literal translation "Pigmy Banana". This is, in fact, the only variety exported (don't ask me why).

One interesting information: bananas in Brazil are extremely cheap, and when someone wants to say that something is almost for free, we say "preço de banana", or at a banana price... :-)

In time: I am not a specialist in bananas. I just eat them... :-))

I found most of this information in the site: http://www.udr.org.br/frutas2.htm

Unfortunately, it is in portuguese, only. :-(

I hope I've helped...

Best regards,
Luiz Daniel de Campos