Unfortunately, the end is near for our favorite yellow delicacy. We’ve skirted around the idea of the banana’s impending doom for a while now. But it’s time for us to face the truth: bananas are on the brink of extinction.
A 2015 CNN article enlightened us to Tropical Race 4, a fungal disease that has been tarnishing crops of Cavendish bananas since the 1990s. It first popped up in Malaysian banana plantations and eventually spread to Southeast Asia, Australia, and finally Africa by 2013. TR4 has yet to hit South America, but if and when it does, scientists fear it will have devastating effects on the Cavendish species and other local species of bananas.
The Cavendish banana is currently the most-exported banana species in the world, but it hasn’t always been such. Pre-1960s, the Gros Michel banana species was top of the line (and has yet to be beat). It lasted longer and didn’t need artificial ripening. But by 1965, the Gros Michel banana was completely wiped out by the Panama disease, a similar fungal disease to TR4. Inferior species Cavendish then had to take the Gros Michel’s place as top banana — literally.
But now the Cavendish is experiencing the same destruction as its forefather. Being a monoculture, meaning all the Cavendish plants are the exactly same, they are especially prone to widespread epidemics. TR4 could very well cause the demise of the banana as we know it.
It’s incredibly hard to stop TR4 from spreading due to the fact that it originates in the soil of the plantations. The fungus affects the vascular system of the fruit and prevents the banana plant from sucking up water through its root system.
Dan Koeppel, author of the book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, told CNN that the only way to get rid of the fungus is to burn an entire plantation down and restart with an entirely new crop. Of course, this solution isn’t financially feasible for plantation owners and growers, so the disease continues to spread.
As of today, there is still no light at the end of the TR4 tunnel and scientists fear the worst. A chemical treatment to thwart the spread of the fungus has proved to be ineffective and scientists have been forced to move on to Plan B.
In July 2018, a Tech Times article reported that researchers have found another species of banana that grows on a Madagascan tree and is seemingly immune to the disease. They hope to create a hybrid Cavendish/Madagascan banana that can take over after the Cavendish dies out.
So, there is still some hope. Ultimately, experts say that the banana industry must move away from the monoculture model in order to prevent a widespread disease from happening again once the Cavendish are gone. Fool them twice, shame on them.
