Why The World’s Most Popular Banana May Go stone-dead
The world's most popular banana you can find banana in every supermarket around the world they're so popular because they're yummy they look nice and they ripen as they transport it's high yielding so it's got quite a thick skin and so it travels well and tastes pretty good comes in its own package but there's a problem they are sterile they don't have seeds no seeds means cavendish bananas are clones of each other.
So the only way to propagate them is in vitro or by taking new growths called suckers from the base of an older plant but since they're all genetic copies cavendish are really vulnerable to disease the domino effect if you have everything wrong with just one clone one disease can kill everything.
Plant by plant that's exactly what's happening with tree one of the deadliest plant diseases out there the fungus doesn't spread to humans but it does eventually kill the banana plant so no more fruit grows scientists guessed the fungus probably started somewhere in southeast Asia in the 90s and quickly spread across the globe then in 2019 it hit
America combined with the Caribbean that area grows 75of the world's to make sure the fungus doesn't spread farms across Colombia have implemented Bio-security measures eva north 2 was one of the first farm in the country to detect tr4 workers wash down and disinfect the underside of any car that comes in just in case there's infected soil hiding in the treads antonio's team built cement pass throughout the farm.
So on their way to harvest workers are walking on open soil once they've reached the area ready to be harvested workers walk through a sanitizing foot bath made of ammonium promedio quinoa out in the field workers measure the banana fingers to make sure they're ready to harvest they're usually ready about 12 to 13weeks after the fruit stem shows upon worker cuts down a 65 pound bundle while the other catches it and carries it to the cableway that cableway system brings all those banana bunches to the packaging plant first workers sanitize the bunches with chlorine then they check the bananas for quality and any signs of fusarium damage they cut off and throw bushels into a huge tank that bath not only preserves the bananas but washes off any of the latex that naturally.
The bananas get cut into smaller bunches of five to seven workers wrap the banana carefully so they don't bruise that wrapping has holes in it so the bananas can ripen as they travel no more than four hours after the bananas are harvested those boxes end upon pallets loaded onto trucks the bananas are trucked to the nearby port where they're moved onto ships this shipment is headed to the u. switch equipment bananas and people moving along this global supply chain it's easy to see how the fungus could spread if tr4 does sneak into a farm the Colombian government has laid out strict guidelines for containing the fungus that means they found symptoms like the yellowing of the leaves is splitting of the same once tier 4 is identified.
In a plant you can't just kill that one plant the fungus goes about 10 feet deep into the soil once the pathogen is in the soil is almost impossible to eradicate do you have to kill off all the plants in that area foreignto keep operating the rest of the farm evan norte ii followed the government's three-zone plan the injected herbicide kills all the plants in zone addition that tarps so birds won't land on the fungus and spread it around there are also canals around the zone to keep any water away from the infected in zone b called the buffer zone finally in zone c plants are allowed to grow but they're constantly monitored for signs of tr4 jose estimates bio-security has cost the farm as much as5 million dollars since 2019 so they're pricey but the measures are working at keeping the fungus at bay magdalena these bio-security measures have contained the fungus in Colombia and kept it from spreading to Ecuador.
The largest exporter of bananas in the world but fungus can wipe out an entire fruit variety if not stopped we know because it's happened before in the early 1900sa banana called gros michel was the most popular but by the 1950sone strain of the panama disease wiped out the whole production of gross michelle luckily cavendish was resistant to that first strainso it took over as the banana of choice the problem was banana companies built their entire supply chains around this cavendish variety in 2019 they exported 20 million bananas and supported millions of jobs globally but now the cavendish is also vulnerable the history repeats itself now with the tropical race for and the cavities cooking bananas like plantains are also at risk for tr4a risk for a food security because the plantains are staple food in latin america africa and many other countries.
They are part of our daily diet so yeah the newest race of fusarium is scary for both cavendish and plantains but this time around we have advanced science researchers across the globe are working toward one goal this guy actually invented a banana that did just that back in.
We have a line of cavendish which appears to be completely resistant totr4 the thing we haven't done yet is a taste test and that's because the gm they look smell feel exactly the same as every other banana we've only changed one gene but no one would buy his miracle banana because it was genetically modified foreign in the eu most member countries have either partly or fully banned gmos in the u.s they're allowed but feared one argument against gmos is that these modified plants would quickly spread their genes and kill our biodiversity but with bananas that's not a problem the genes don't move because they are stirrups you can grow agm banana next to a non-gmo banana for 50 years and the gene will not move from one to the other incredibly frustrating there's a solution but it's it's a scientific solution but not a political solution.
So scientists had to go back to the drawing board using what they learned from james to play the non-gmo game fernando is a breeder for key gene genetics company in the Netherlands and he thinks the best way to get around hmo regulations is through traditional breeding meaning you take two different types of bananas the cavendish and one that is resistant and you essentially have the meat and their kid is hopefully.
Resistant to panama disease but still tastes good like cavendish gross breeding or traditional breeding is something that happens every day innature so the bees are pollinating the different flowers with other flowers so that's what we're doing here we are acting asbees fernando has found a few resistant bananas to cross with cavendish but most of them are not even edible bananas are the bananas that are full of seeds like this one and across those with a cavendish is hard they are sterile very difficult to breed if not impossible so you can try to cross but you need to do it many times to get only a few seats for james to make that first gmo banana it took him nearly 10 years since our first field trip for those future bananas that are traditionally bred it'll take just as long it will take lots of years because the life cycle.
The banana is quite slow but the longer it takes to traditionally breed a resistant cavendish the more the disease spreads and the more strains of fusarium could be released fernando says there's a bigger picture way to attack this problem diversity take tomatoes for example you go to the grocery store and there may be10 or more different types of tomatoes cherry wine beef roma that's diversity so if one tomato gets in trouble it won't be a huge loss fernando and his colleagues have the same vision for bananas we have red bananas pink bananas.
Why not try to incorporate that into the market so that you can go to the supermarket and have a complete bench of different options of bananas that you can choose. There are hundreds of different banana varieties around the world from a friend of mine.
Collected one up in papua new guinea that he said if you didn't know it you think you're eating a strawberry now so amazingly different flavors and diversity would also help farms but if you have different types of bananas grown together probably one banana will be more resistant than the next one so that one can stop the spreading of the disease to the next plants why haven't companies diversified because it's too expensive and complicated to change a 25 billion dollar industry built around monocultures until a solution is found these biosecurity measures will have to be the short-term fix for keeping the big business of bananas.
So the only way to propagate them is in vitro or by taking new growths called suckers from the base of an older plant but since they're all genetic copies cavendish are really vulnerable to disease the domino effect if you have everything wrong with just one clone one disease can kill everything.
Plant by plant that's exactly what's happening with tree one of the deadliest plant diseases out there the fungus doesn't spread to humans but it does eventually kill the banana plant so no more fruit grows scientists guessed the fungus probably started somewhere in southeast Asia in the 90s and quickly spread across the globe then in 2019 it hit
America combined with the Caribbean that area grows 75of the world's to make sure the fungus doesn't spread farms across Colombia have implemented Bio-security measures eva north 2 was one of the first farm in the country to detect tr4 workers wash down and disinfect the underside of any car that comes in just in case there's infected soil hiding in the treads antonio's team built cement pass throughout the farm.
So on their way to harvest workers are walking on open soil once they've reached the area ready to be harvested workers walk through a sanitizing foot bath made of ammonium promedio quinoa out in the field workers measure the banana fingers to make sure they're ready to harvest they're usually ready about 12 to 13weeks after the fruit stem shows upon worker cuts down a 65 pound bundle while the other catches it and carries it to the cableway that cableway system brings all those banana bunches to the packaging plant first workers sanitize the bunches with chlorine then they check the bananas for quality and any signs of fusarium damage they cut off and throw bushels into a huge tank that bath not only preserves the bananas but washes off any of the latex that naturally.
The bananas get cut into smaller bunches of five to seven workers wrap the banana carefully so they don't bruise that wrapping has holes in it so the bananas can ripen as they travel no more than four hours after the bananas are harvested those boxes end upon pallets loaded onto trucks the bananas are trucked to the nearby port where they're moved onto ships this shipment is headed to the u. switch equipment bananas and people moving along this global supply chain it's easy to see how the fungus could spread if tr4 does sneak into a farm the Colombian government has laid out strict guidelines for containing the fungus that means they found symptoms like the yellowing of the leaves is splitting of the same once tier 4 is identified.
In a plant you can't just kill that one plant the fungus goes about 10 feet deep into the soil once the pathogen is in the soil is almost impossible to eradicate do you have to kill off all the plants in that area foreignto keep operating the rest of the farm evan norte ii followed the government's three-zone plan the injected herbicide kills all the plants in zone addition that tarps so birds won't land on the fungus and spread it around there are also canals around the zone to keep any water away from the infected in zone b called the buffer zone finally in zone c plants are allowed to grow but they're constantly monitored for signs of tr4 jose estimates bio-security has cost the farm as much as5 million dollars since 2019 so they're pricey but the measures are working at keeping the fungus at bay magdalena these bio-security measures have contained the fungus in Colombia and kept it from spreading to Ecuador.
The largest exporter of bananas in the world but fungus can wipe out an entire fruit variety if not stopped we know because it's happened before in the early 1900sa banana called gros michel was the most popular but by the 1950sone strain of the panama disease wiped out the whole production of gross michelle luckily cavendish was resistant to that first strainso it took over as the banana of choice the problem was banana companies built their entire supply chains around this cavendish variety in 2019 they exported 20 million bananas and supported millions of jobs globally but now the cavendish is also vulnerable the history repeats itself now with the tropical race for and the cavities cooking bananas like plantains are also at risk for tr4a risk for a food security because the plantains are staple food in latin america africa and many other countries.
They are part of our daily diet so yeah the newest race of fusarium is scary for both cavendish and plantains but this time around we have advanced science researchers across the globe are working toward one goal this guy actually invented a banana that did just that back in.
We have a line of cavendish which appears to be completely resistant totr4 the thing we haven't done yet is a taste test and that's because the gm they look smell feel exactly the same as every other banana we've only changed one gene but no one would buy his miracle banana because it was genetically modified foreign in the eu most member countries have either partly or fully banned gmos in the u.s they're allowed but feared one argument against gmos is that these modified plants would quickly spread their genes and kill our biodiversity but with bananas that's not a problem the genes don't move because they are stirrups you can grow agm banana next to a non-gmo banana for 50 years and the gene will not move from one to the other incredibly frustrating there's a solution but it's it's a scientific solution but not a political solution.
So scientists had to go back to the drawing board using what they learned from james to play the non-gmo game fernando is a breeder for key gene genetics company in the Netherlands and he thinks the best way to get around hmo regulations is through traditional breeding meaning you take two different types of bananas the cavendish and one that is resistant and you essentially have the meat and their kid is hopefully.
Resistant to panama disease but still tastes good like cavendish gross breeding or traditional breeding is something that happens every day innature so the bees are pollinating the different flowers with other flowers so that's what we're doing here we are acting asbees fernando has found a few resistant bananas to cross with cavendish but most of them are not even edible bananas are the bananas that are full of seeds like this one and across those with a cavendish is hard they are sterile very difficult to breed if not impossible so you can try to cross but you need to do it many times to get only a few seats for james to make that first gmo banana it took him nearly 10 years since our first field trip for those future bananas that are traditionally bred it'll take just as long it will take lots of years because the life cycle.
The banana is quite slow but the longer it takes to traditionally breed a resistant cavendish the more the disease spreads and the more strains of fusarium could be released fernando says there's a bigger picture way to attack this problem diversity take tomatoes for example you go to the grocery store and there may be10 or more different types of tomatoes cherry wine beef roma that's diversity so if one tomato gets in trouble it won't be a huge loss fernando and his colleagues have the same vision for bananas we have red bananas pink bananas.
Why not try to incorporate that into the market so that you can go to the supermarket and have a complete bench of different options of bananas that you can choose. There are hundreds of different banana varieties around the world from a friend of mine.
Collected one up in papua new guinea that he said if you didn't know it you think you're eating a strawberry now so amazingly different flavors and diversity would also help farms but if you have different types of bananas grown together probably one banana will be more resistant than the next one so that one can stop the spreading of the disease to the next plants why haven't companies diversified because it's too expensive and complicated to change a 25 billion dollar industry built around monocultures until a solution is found these biosecurity measures will have to be the short-term fix for keeping the big business of bananas.
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