[A-List] Destructive creation: going bananas

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Banana on the slippery slope to extinction
VICKY COLLINS
The Herald, 16 January 2003

THE banana could be extinct within 10 years, it was claimed yesterday.

A global consortium of scientists are working against the clock to save the
humble banana, on which many economies in Africa rely to survive.

The banana may be the world's most popular fruit, but in scientific terms it
is a sterile mutant - the edible version of the fruit has no seeds.

Bananas are cultivated by replanting cuttings from the bananas stems. The
lack of genetic variation means pests or diseases can wipe out entire
varieties, with no way of developing new ones to replace them.

The Cavendish, the variety eaten today, is steadily being wiped out by two
fungal diseases, the Panama and black Sigatoka, which has swept through
plantations in South Africa, Australia, and Asia. Once it reaches the large
western hemisphere banana farms, the fruit will be doomed.

Scientists from across the world are working to solve the problem through
genetic engineering. However, producers are reluctant to invest in the
project, and consumers are still wary of genetically modified foods.

The consortium have warned that, within 10 years, it could be a choice
between genetically engineered bananas, or none.

In the 1950s, the once dominant Gros Michel banana was wiped out by Panama
disease, caused by a soil fungus. Its successor was the Cavendish, but with
nothing readily available to replace it, crisis point looms.

A report in New Scientist magazine says: "In some ways, the banana today
resembles the potato before blight brought famine to Ireland a century and a
half ago."

Emile Frison, head of the International Network for the Improvement of
Banana and Plantain in Montpellier, France, said diseases such as black
Sigatoka were becoming increasingly difficult to control.

"As soon as you bring in a new fungicide, they develop resistance," he said.

Experts believe the first edible banana was grown about 10,000 years ago in
South-east Asia, making it one of the oldest crops. Each variety of modern
banana has come down almost unchanged from an individual sterile forest
mutant.

"Each is a virtual clone, almost devoid of genetic diversity," said New
Scientist. "And that uniformity makes it ripe for disease like no other crop
on earth."