Posted on 05/15/2006 3:09:09 PM PDT by blam
A future with no bananas?
11:00 13 May 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.
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.
I thought the article was about curing my slice...
I was ready to go out and buy another driver!
Apparently it isn't extinct either. Just very rare.
Mommy, what's that green pill on my table?
It's soylent green.
What's soylent green mommy?
IT'S PEOPLE! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!
OMG....that is good!!!!! ROFLMAO
Someone wants more money
No more banana cream pie! No more banana pudding! No more banana bread! No more banana splits! Life just isn't worth living without bananas.
HEH! That one needs a condom!
I live in a small town in upstate NY. Our local grocery store commonly sells 4 different kinds of bananas. If I go to the city and look in specialty store I can find a few more types. If my little one store town has 4 kinds I wonder how valid this story truly is.
There is a guy in Ventura County, CA that grows a wild strain of bannana on part of his coastal farm. They don't look the same as the usual ones. They are sweeter and more heavily bananna tasting. They are not cheap. You can freeze them and eat them in place of ice cream. Boutique grocers may have them.
"...I went to high school with Michelle Banana..."
There was a fellow at our high school named Michael Pickle. Wouldn't it be great if Michael Pickle and Michelle Banana met and got married?
yeah, or if there was a Michelle Pickle. So you'd really be in a pickle (ouch)if you married her.
It isn't. I know a grower who grows a strain in CA. Go back down to your store and look for a CA label on wierd-looking ones. Farmers ship their highest quality produce very long distances for maximum profit. They also use air freight. If you don't know where the farm is near you, you get the cheap quality.
Oh, this is terrible. Now, when he isn't mouthing political stupidities, what will Harry Belafonte sing about?
I have some friends who got married. They are now Dusty and Sandy Meadows.
And then, again, there is this one:
http://computerpranks.com/viewimage.cfm?i=3304
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