http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/54710/ Seems we as a species have yet to learn to stop single-species agrarian production. You'd think the potato blight would have been enough to convince people of the danger back in the 1845.
So the answer is crop rotation? Any way to mix in the Cavendish and the Gros Michel I don't know much about plant disease but I think we should get my boys down at TAMU to look into it I'm sure we will have a Maroon Banana by the end of the year Rocket River
I'd argue the answer would be to diversify crops away from single strains, making them less susceptible to a single "outbreak" destroying all the crop. Nature has thousands of varieties for a reason.
I'm wondering where are the original land races of bananas which today's commercial bananas are descended from? Perhaps those may have more resistance to this disease and could be crossbred with the current commercial varieties.
I agree. On a related note there is an international program to create a seed vault in Norway that will store samples of all of the seeds for plants that we currently cultivate that way in case a blight were to wipe out one species of food plant we can still go back to the seed vault and find an older variety that may be resistant.
I thought God made the Banana perfect <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RwfJGWd88so&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RwfJGWd88so&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
"Trip advisor is the *life-blood* of the Agrotourism industry. A couple of bad reviews there, you may as well close up shop. That's what took down the Stach Inn; one of the cutest little asparagus farms you'll ever see."
This is nothing new. I saw a 60 minutes report that talked about how we have a silo that houses all the world's seeds because our food is becoming extinct. We lose food all the time.
The standard twinkie used to be banana flavored until a shortage of bananas in WWII caused them to switch to vanilla cream filling (thank you food network, for filling my mind with those kinds of facts).
I'm mostly ignorance about this, but how much of this is due to us growing sterile crops instead of those that produce sustainable seeds? I just know that when I bring my garden vegetables to the local farmer's market, some of the people there talk about growing sustainable crops rather than the genetically engineered sterile ones. (That might just be the whitest sentence I've ever written in my life.)
Sterile and monocultured crops are indeed the culprit. The only way to cultivate new plants is by cuttings (taking a small section of an existing plant and growing it into a big plant). Consequently there is no way to introduce new variations. If all the varieties around today become susceptible to disease then that's it, they're gone. For those of us in the west that's just one less choice in the supermarket, but there are vast swathes of the world where the banana is the staple carbohydrate source for millions of people. It'd be like the west no longer having anything to make flour for bread, and having no alternative.
OMG I remember watching that too. It actually made me want a twinkie for the first time in 12 years. I couldn't hardly finish one. I had to give the other one away!
