Posted on 12/17/2013 9:56:16 AM PST by Red Badger
'National emergency' declared in Costa Rica, one of the biggest suppliers Country produces 1.2 million tons of bananas each year - one in five could be ruined by plagues of mealybugs and scale insects Elsewhere, banana-eating fungus from Asia and Australia is spreading
Plagues of insects and a spreading fungus are threatening the world's supply of bananas, researchers have warned.
A state of 'national emergency' has been declared in Costa Rica, one of the world's biggest suppliers, while separately a banana-eating fungus from Asia is believed to be spreading.
Officials in the Central American country of Costa Rica fear that one in five bananas could have been ruined by insects this year. The country last year supplied 1.2 million tons of the fruit worldwide.
The director of the country’s agriculture ministry’s State Phytosanitary Services (SFE), Magda Gonzalez, told the Tico Times the rising number of mealybugs and scale insects on the country’s Atlantic coast regions can be explained by rising temperatures along with changing rain patterns.
She said these conditions could shorten the insects’ reproduction cycle by one third.
‘I can tell you with near certainty that climate change is behind these pests,’ she told the paper.
SFE has estimated that the pests have affected around 24,000 hectares of banana field in the Central American country.
Last year, Costa Rica exported more than 1.2 million tons of bananas, valued at more than $815 million, or around £500 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Not the world's banana supply!
Fungi.
At ease, disease, there’s a fungus among us...................
How did an Asian fungus make it to Central America?
There goes my smoothies, dammit.
Well, the US is now a Banana Republic, so maybe we can just grow our own.
The Panama Canal?...............
There’s always tofu................
I was going to put in some bananas - but they draw rattlesnakes...
Soy kills me.
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.................
I like that...
Well the Chineese own the canal
The kind of banana we are used to getting from the grocery is not what our grandparents ate. Their banana got wiped out by a fungal disease too. And I think this has happened a couple times. The answer is the same as always, they will find a new variety of banana to replace the current one. (these funguses are variety specific).
The trouble is that the varieties grown are the best tasting and best looking variety. Our grandparents banana was better tasting I suppose.
There was an article I read years ago, sorry don’t have any citation, that warned about the extreme homogeneity of commercial bananas and the possibility that they could all be wiped out worldwide. Looks like someone knew what they were talking about.
Bananas aren’t good for you anyway. Nothing but carbs.
Used to have RED bananas in stores.
Now only in specialty gourmet markets................
That’s what happened in Ireland to the potato crop in the 1840’s...................
But they’re good carbs.................
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