Viewpoint: Our favorite Cavendish banana may be heading towards extinction—Scientists say only a biotech solution, blocked by anti-GMO activists, can save it

August 19, 2019 Steve Savage


As I wrote for Forbes in 2018, we might lose bananas as an affordable part of our diet. A dreaded new strain of a soil-born fungal disease that has already severely hurt the industry in Australia and Africa has now been confirmed to have reached the Americas. Others have raised this alarm. This also happened in the mid 1900s when an earlier strain of this fungus wiped out the “Grand Nain” banana variety. That calamity made the 1923 song by Frank Silver and Irvin Cohn, “Yes, we have no bananas” sound prophetic. The great old Simon and Garfunkel song, “Slip-slidin Away” also comes to mind.

The current Cavendish banana of commerce has a colorful history traveling through England of all places, but by chance it was resistant to the first strain of the fungus. Unfortunately the new Tropical Race 4 strain has overcome that resistance. Once the fungus is introduced into a given plantation’s soil, there is no way to get rid of it. The industry tried really hard to keep the pest out, but all it takes to spread it is a bit of dirt on someone’s boot.

Now I’m sure some will say that this is all a problem because of “monoculture.” Yes, the whole commercial banana industry relies on very few varieties, but that isn’t something easily avoided, as I explained in that earlier article. No one can do conventional breeding of bananas with any efficiency because, in case you hadn’t noticed, the bananas we like don’t have the big black, hard seeds of wild bananas. Remember the old kid’s song, “I love bananas because they have no bones!”.........To Read More...