Quote:
Originally Posted by lorax
Most of the USA's bananas come from Ecuador, and if the Cavendishes here fail, we will start exporting Panama-resistant Sedas (which you used to know as Gros Michel) again, I suppose. As far as I'm aware, the largest banana importer in the world is America.
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Gros Michel plants that survived the first attack of panama disease either were not in affected plantations and thus did not get the disease or may have shown some degree of resistance. However, they are not concerned about that same disease anymore, panama disease race 4 (different from the one that destroyed the farms in the past) will kill Gros Michel and Cavendish plants.
There is some research that happens in the US, however, even though we consume the most bananas, we really are not in the best situation to be researching them. We hardly produce any and we simply don't have enough land in the tropics to be doing it on the scale of the large banana research centers (which are also concerned and actively working on the issue).
As far as resistant varieties go, there are plenty that have been developed, and many more landraces that are naturally resistant to panama disease race 4. The problem is that none are similar enough to Cavendish, either in flavor and texture, culture and management, or shipping and handling ability to take the place of Cavendish.
In Taiwan, where the entire banana industry is based around TC plants, they are continually micropropagating new plants. I think they only harvest fruit from a plant twice, and then replant. This ensures that any pathogen present doesn't even have a chance of getting established. Since they produce millions and millions of plants annually, they get a lot of "off types" and in the early 90's already found stable mutations of commercial quality Cavendish which are resistant to panama disease race 4. If panama disease race 4 makes in to latin america, my guess is that many growers would try planting a resistant Cavendish before switching varieties altogether.
There are a lot of stories out there about how the banana is "going extinct" and will not be available in 5-10 years....its all very misunderstood and there are solutions out there. Worst case scenario (for the industry), is they would have to switch to something like Goldfinger, which although very different from Cavendish in flavor and texture, is resistant to panama disease race 4. I can't imagine that a banana grower would rather go out of business then try growing a different variety.