The Coming Banana Apocalypse

Bananas are currently the number one fruit eaten in North America. That may change in the very near future.

In the last few years, a strain of fungus affecting bananas has started to spread. Many plantations in parts of South-East Asia have already been wiped out, and it is only a matter of time before it spreads to the South American plantations where we get virtually all our bananas from.

The disease is spreading this fast because of the lack of genetic diversity in commercial banana plants. The banans we enjoy are a seedless fruit and new plants are created from cuttings and other "cloning" techniques. Every single banana plant is essentially genetically identical, and thus vulnerable to this disease. There is no genetic diversity which would allow some plants to have higher levels of resistance to it.

As Popular Science reports, banana growers and geneticists are currently scrambling to develop new varieties of banana that are resistant to this disease and are commercially viable.

What I find interesting is how well this situation enforces the point of how detrimental a monoculture can be for agriculture. Bananas are certainly not the only crop being farmed with a very small genetic diversity. The number of different varieties of cattle, chickens, pigs, grains, and fruit has steadily dropped over the last hundred years. Many of the varieties that were common a century ago are now all but extinct, confined to niche markets if we're lucky. It is probable that a disease could evolve in the near future that all but wipes out another type of crop. This time it may not be a fruit we consider a luxury, but could very well be a staple food for much of the world such as rice or wheat.

• Tags:
• food
• banana
• diversity
• genetics
• agriculture
• farming