Free Republic

A new genome mapping model uncovered 62 key trait loci in bananas, overcoming chromosomal barriers and aiding future crop improvement across complex plant genomes. Bananas are a dietary staple for millions of people, but their cultivation faces serious threats due to limited genetic diversity and significant breeding challenges. In a major scientific breakthrough, researchers examined more than 2,700 triploid banana hybrids to uncover the genetic basis of 24 important traits related to yield, plant structure, and fruit quality. By using a high-resolution SNP dataset along with an adapted genome-wide association study (GWAS) model, the team identified 62 genomic regions associated...

A killer disease turns up out of the blue. It moves by “stealth transmission”, spreading before symptoms even show. Once it takes hold, it is already too late to stop it – there is no cure. ..."Tropical Race 4" (TR4) is a disease that affects bananas. Also known as Panama Disease, it is a fungus that has been rampaging through banana farms the past 30 years...within the last decade the epidemic has accelerated, spreading from Asia to Australia, the Middle East, Africa and more recently Latin America, where the majority of the bananas shipped to supermarkets in the global north...

French cyclist Julien Bernard has given a light-hearted apology after being fined for kissing his wife during a Tour de France time trial. The Lidl-Trek rider was made to pay 200 Swiss francs ($223) by the International Cycling Union for stopping briefly during stage seven of the race. ... Writing on social media, Bernard apologised to the UCI for "having damaged the image of sport" but said he was willing to pay the fine "every day and relive this moment". Stage seven of the Tour de France is a short course of 23.3km (14.5 miles) and is one of two...

Some people lie awake nights worrying about terrorist attacks, giant asteroids crashing into the Earth or war with Russia. I can slumber peacefully through those perils. What causes me to wake up screaming is the banana blight. To say I'm favorably inclined toward bananas is like saying Miley Cyrus has overcome her inhibitions. I have an unbroken record of eating two bananas a day that stretches back to the Johnson administration. Two is the bare minimum I regard as necessary to sustain life. I'm not ashamed to say there are days when I've gone through five. After that I stop...

♦ ♦ ♦ RACE PREVIEW Stage 14 would appear to be yet another one of those ostensibly flat transitional days which may nonetheless conceal a few challenges within the route. The first 50km out of Nîmes stretches across the flat Rhône delta before threading through some gentle Provençal hills along the way to the Durance Valley. It's only in the final 50 km the riders start meeting some real foothills of any consequence, including two moderate CAT 4 climbs, but the whole course from start to end will have taken the peloton from nearly sea-level at Nîmes to alt.735m...

ONCE you become accustomed to gas at $4 a gallon, brace yourself for the next shocking retail threshold: bananas reaching $1 a pound. At that price, Americans may stop thinking of bananas as a cheap staple, and then a strategy that has served the big banana companies for more than a century — enabling them to turn an exotic, tropical fruit into an everyday favorite — will begin to unravel. The immediate reasons for the price increase are the rising cost of oil and reduced supply caused by floods in Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter. But something larger is...