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.
"Yes, we have no bananas..."
Is it Bush's fault, or just the EVIL United States in general?
The magic of Entrepreneurial Capitalism will solve this problem, without any doubt whatsoever.
I kinda like the hybrid mix of "Plantain x Cavendish". Tougher skin and not as sweet when ripe. But that's just me.
This is terrible. What will the public schools give the students for condom training?
I recall Geraldo saying we would lose all of our banana pickers here in the U.S. if we sent the illegals back to Mexico.
I prepared myself for the worst then. :^)
x42 could probably make himself available, but only for the girl's classes.
Didn't this already happen about eighty years ago to the Gros Michel banana?
Yes we have no bananas.
I went to high school with Michelle Banana.
Could this be the one way to get our President to stop monkeying around on immigration?
Cucumbers, doc. Or maybe (can't have any self-esteem damage now, can we?) zucchini.
Plenty of bananas left in the Gene pool in the US...Howie Dean, Babs Boxer, Steve Colbert, Bill Mahr, Harry Reid, Diane Fienstien...jeeeezzzz...we've basically got the market cornered on fruits and nuts.
Maybe the UN wants to get involved so they can control the import / export of bananas?
Why couldn't it be something like broccoli that is in danger of being extinct?
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