The Coming Banana Apocalypse
For starters, nearly all commercial banana plants are perfect clones of one another and
most originate from one single plant from Southeast Asia.
Now to be clear, there are approximately 1000 different types of banana plants in the world
today and within each variety most are generally clones of one another, although some do have
a bit of genetic diversification.
But “the” banana, since the 1960s, the one sold commercially in supermarkets the
world over, is the Cavendish banana, named after William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire.
Most types of bananas originate from hybrids of the Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana.
When these two cross breed, the result is a half breed banana plant that is almost completely
sterile.
The first records of these half breed banana plants being cultivated dates back around
10,000-15,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest known cultivated plants.
Because this mutant plant was unable to breed on its own, agriculturists had to find another
way to propagate the plants.
There are a few different ways to do so, but the most popular is to simply take a shoot,
called a “sucker”, off an existing plant and plant it elsewhere.
Even if the sucker has no roots, if placed in the correct type of soil (wet sandy soil),
it will develop them in time.
The banana plant was gradually developed into varieties we see today and propagated throughout
the world initially by Arab traders and later Spanish conquistadors.
So a hybrid plant that normally would have died off quite quickly has been spared by
human intervention, with humans’ simply taking shoots from desirable existing plants
and spreading them throughout the world.
The advantages to this is that among each variety, they are nearly all perfect clones
of one another, which means as a commercial product, a Cavendish banana from some Cavendish
banana plant in Africa will taste and look the same as one from South America.
There is one huge drawback however.
Because they are clones, what will kill one, will kill them all, which has come into play
before in the commercial banana world.
The Banana Apocalypse The Cavendish banana was not the world’s
most popular banana until the 1960s.
In fact, it was relatively unknown among the masses and even after the 1960s the former
world’s most popular banana, the Gros Michel or “Big Mike”, was generally preferred
by businesses and consumers alike.
The Gros Michel was preferred by businesses due to being easier to ship and they stored
longer before spoiling than the Cavendish.
Consumers also liked them better for the increase in storage time as well as the fact that they
are larger and sweeter and generally considered to taste better.
The latter being one of the reasons it was the world’s most popular banana in the first
place.
Unfortunately, the world was forced, very suddenly, to switch bananas in the middle
of the 20th century.
So what happened to force this switch?
What happened was a banana apocalypse on a global scale.
You see, as mentioned, the drawback of the fact that within each variety of banana nearly
all the bananas are clones of one another is what will kill or harm one banana plant
will do the same to all other banana plants of the same variety.
Enter the Panama disease which caused the near extinction of the Gros Michel Banana.
Panama disease is a type of fungus that lives in the soil and to which fungicides do not
work against, which is why it is such a threat.
There are a variety of strains of this fungus out there, one of which wiped out the Gros
Michel Banana as a commercial product.
It was around the 1920s when this particular strain of the Panama disease first showed
up in Sirname.
From there, it spread quickly through the Caribbean and eventually throughout the banana
growing world.
By the 1960s, due to the mass wipe-out of the Gros Michel, banana growers were pretty
much all nearly bankrupt and were desperately trying to find a way to stay afloat.
Enter the Cavendish banana, which is smaller, but somewhat similar tasting to the Gros Michel,
only less sweet and more care needed in its shipping and storage.
But just as important as the similar taste was that it was resistant to the particular
strain of the Panama disease that wiped out the Gros Michel.
A few billion dollars in infrastructure change later and growers successfully made the switch,
with the mass public accepting the new banana in place of the Gros Michel.
Unfortunately, a new strain of the Panama disease, that the Cavendish banana is not
resistant to, sprung up in 1992 and threatens the world’s most popular banana once again.
This time however, there has not yet been found a similar substitute banana among the
other 1000 or so varieties out there.
Most varieties of banana contain giant hard seeds throughout the soft fleshy inside and
generally taste nothing like the bananas we are used to eating.
A second banana apocalypse, if it happens soon before a new variety can either be genetically
engineered or carefully bred, will likely see the end of the fruit as a popular commercial
product.
Since this new strain of Panama disease has showed up, it has already wiped out plantations
in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, and Taiwan and is currently spreading through Southeast
Asia.
It is also thought that it is only a matter of time before it spreads through Africa and
Latin America, which would be the death knell for the Cavendish as a commercial product.
Because of this, extremely strict cultivation rules and regulations are in place to try
and protect the commercial plantations from becoming infected.
Some experts even say this should be sufficient to stop the commercial extinction of the Cavendish
banana from ever happening.
But others feel this is naive as similar efforts were put forth to try and protect the Gros
Michel before its eventual commercial extinction.
Although, we do have the benefit of better technology today to aid in protecting the
plantations.
However, even with this, it may be only a matter of time before Cavendish bananas will
no longer be available in stores.
Bonus Facts: • Bananas do not grow on trees.
Rather, they grow from a root structure that produces an above ground stem.
The plant is specifically classified as an arborescent (tree-like) perennial herb; in
fact, it is the largest herbaceous flowering plant.
• Just as interesting as the banana plant being an herb is that the banana itself is
a berry.
• One of the few other somewhat accepted varieties of banana is the Goldfinger banana,
which doesn’t taste like the Cavendish or Gros Michel at all, rather tastes a bit like
an apple.
This variety was a hybrid bred banana created by Philip Rowe.
It did not catch on commercially in most of the world, excepting parts of Australia.
• Although no longer viable for mass cultivation, the Gros Michel still grows in certain areas
of the world that has not been touched by the particular strain of Panama disease that
wiped it out as a commercial product.
For similar reasons, the Cavendish is not likely to ever be completely wiped out, though
it is thought it will eventually go the way of the Gros Michel and eventually no longer
be commercially available.