Platystemon posted:

The idea that companies will develope fungus‐resistant bananas is fiction, but not for the reason you think.

First let’s talk about banana genetics. The joke about bananas is that they haven’t had sex for ten thousand years. There is a kernel (that’s a pun) of truth to that. Edible cultivars are sterile, almost by definition.

‘Gros Michel’ could not be bred with ‘Cavendish’ to get something that’s resistant to Panama disease.

However, the forebears of edible bananas were not sterile. We can go to the wild relatives of the domestic banana, breed within each species for fungus resistance, cross two species to get a seedless hybrid, and see how it performs. We’re not modifying a known tasty variety to be resistant to fungus; we’re pulling a slot machine handle and hoping to get something that tastes good and grows well.

Sexual reproduction is great, but there is another way. Clones can diverge through mutations. This can be accelerated with the atomic gardening that gave us the ruby red grapefruit (no, really), but it happens through the centuries regardless.

At around the time the (western) Roman Empire was a going concern, someone in the area of the African Great Lakes obtained a single banana plant. In the centuries since, bananas have flourished in the region. There are now some two hundred cultivars. The majority are picked green and prepared somewhat like a potato, steamed and mashed. There are at least a dozen cultivars that are specialised for beer‐making, the banana equivalent of cider apples. Ugandans eat a quarter tonne of bananas per person per year.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sK2MStmxWM

Here is what it looks like to make banana beer the traditional way. It’s more fun.

Despite the great culinary diversity displayed by East African highland bananas (EAHB), they remain extremely close genetically. Threats to the West’s favourite snack the Cavendish get all the press, but an epidemic in East African highland bananas could be this century’s potato famine.

Scientists in Uganda are working on diversifying EAHBs by finding fertile mutants.


To be clear, a “bunch” of bananas is the entire crop of one plant, not the “hand” they’re broken into at retail. So it’s like finding a needle in a haystack even with the best candidates.



Uganda isn’t the only nation reliant on bananas. Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, China, India, Indonesia, the United States, France (in Guadeloupe), Brazil, and Honduras also have breeding programmes.

So why did I say that companies weren’t going to create fungus‐resistant bananas?

Simple: these are all national efforts.

Let’s ask the big fruit companies what they think about research and development.

David McLaughlin, Chiquita’s senior director for environmental affairs said in 2003, “We supported a breeding program for forty years, but it wasn’t able to develop an alternative to Cavendish. It was very expensive and we got nothing back.” concluding “We concentrate on research into fungicides now.”

Oh dear.

Since then, they’ve backpedaled a little.


Chiquita may say they “never left traditional breeding” but they did sell their program to the government of Honduras. It has since had success.

Their first public release was FHIA‐01 ‘Goldfinger’. Some people think this will be the heir to Cavendish.



There are several contenders. FHIA‐17 has ‘Gros Michel’ for a parent.

Another way forward is genetic modification. This is faster than breeding and produces more consistent results, but like the Chiquita guy said, it spooks Western consumers. There is still a way to use modern biotech in a limited way by breeding bananas the old fashioned way, then looking at their genes and seeing how they turned out in important areas. This saves a lot of time over putting seeds in the ground and waiting till they mature.

It was incredibly stupid for the big fruit companies to shutter their breeding programmes.

Ugandans cannot afford to be so precious about their food. They’re genetically modifying bananas to be a better source of vitamin A.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUUpi7LHBbc

There is western‐funded opposition to GMOs, but it’s tough to argue against “not going blind”.

Here’s a trial of a fungus‐resistant strain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1TvpXKplns

They are using genetic modification to protect the crop they need to survive.

The great threats to the West’s favourite fruit are, in the final sense, ignorance and greed.