Comment on Banana

kalapala@sopuli.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• Manjushri@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Do you mean the Gros Michel banana ? It went commercially extinct in the ‘60s due to a fungus. So, yeah, probably not coming back. Sadly, the Cavendish banana is also subject to the same fungus so may also get wiped out at some point in the future.

  But Race 4 (also known as TR4 or fusarium wilt), the new version of Panama disease that started affecting crops in the subtropics in the 1980s and wiping them out, has since moved to infect crops in the Vietnam, Laos, Pakistan, India, Mozambique, and Australia. In 2019, Colombia declared a national disaster when it was discovered there. As it inches closer to Latin America, the likelihood of losing the Cavendish increases.

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  • ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    fusarium wilt

    Mmmmm, fusarium wilt!

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  • kalapala@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I guess not as I remember having some actually tasty imported bananas in 90’s. No idea what happened but currently only even a bit tasty ones are natural and really small and still not as sweet.

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• MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Being monocultures, (genetic clones) commercially grown edible bananas are extremely vulnerable to disease.

  The currently most popular variant is the Cavendish, replacing the earlier and now extinct Gros Michel, wiped out by the Panama Disease (a fungus).

  While the Gros Michel isn’t coming back, people are apparently trying to create and grow new variants, as what happened before can happen again.

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• T156@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s still around. It just got replaced by the new banana for produce.

  You can still buy Gros Michel bananas, they’re just harder to find compared to a Cavendish.

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