Quote:
Originally Posted by PR-Giants
As with most things in life, the more you know the less affected you are from propaganda. Most US hobby and backyard growers are very limited on what varieties they can grow and if they eliminate the top quality bananas because they are unable to properly grow in a non-tropical environment the lower quality bananas can appear better. This is common with high quality fruit grown in poor environmental conditions.
If one looks at the recent propaganda of the Gros Michel being better than the Cavendish some cursory research will quickly shed light on that. Anyone that goes back and reads the papers the US government produced 130 years ago will see that the Cavendish was the preferred banana for US importation but growers switched to the Gros Michel because it was much cheaper to ship due to it's thicker peel. The Cavendish cost more to ship because the fruit was more easily damaged during shipping. A perfect example of this today is the plantain, it's peel is so thick it can be thrown into a truck and piled high with no protection. 130 years ago there wasn't trucks or pneumatic tires.
Banana breeding has been going on in the Caribbean for over 130 years and the only advantage the synthetic bananas have had over the landrace bananas has been in yield and disease resistance.
The French and English both focused on fruit quality with disease resistance while the Americans (FHIA) focused on disease resistance and yield so it was never a surprise to see poor acceptance with the FHIA cultivars.
A better question is why do the US hobby and backyard growers grow the FHIA cultivars instead of any of the other synthetic cultivars in the world?
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That's a thought-provoking point. Unfortunately, company and grower propaganda abound, and many try to hype up new varieties or create an "it factor" that makes people want to buy it. Most US hobby and backyard growers are working with sub-tropical conditions at best, and that has a huge impact on the varieties that will grow satisfactorily there. Many growers are just excited to get fruit, and any variety that is tolerant enough of challenging conditions becomes a go to. In my experience, the best cultivars are simply too tropical to grow north or south of the tropics with any success. And for those that are successful, the quality of the fruit just isn't the same and the variety gets a poor review and reputation.
That's really fascinating with the Gros Michel. It has developed a legendary status and the general consensus that it is superior to the cavendish. Yes, and that is the unfortunate thing. There are different purposes for plant and crop breeding, feeding as many people as possible is a valid goal for staple crops and for food insecure regions, but there is also the quest to maximize yields for greater profit, even at the expense of fruit quality. Corporate monocultures have done great damage to crops and the environment and people. Sadly, landrace bananas, which would be great for preserving genetic diversity and collector's wishlists with rare qualities and traits seems nearly impossible to get in the US. Most nurseries offer TC's from Agristarts, and while I'm very thankful for them, they also make it hard to get unique cultivars outside of the mainstays. Often too, these are misidentified or mixed-up.
I've read some about the English breeding program in the Caribbean, and their focus on disease resistance in quality fruit. It seems a major influence for FHIA has been commercial applications, like a direct replacement for the current commercial export variety and challenging, far away markets like North America and Europe.
That's a great question, and I'm curious as well why some of the others, like those developed in the Caribbean and Africa haven't made it here.