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The End of The Cavendish Banana


palmislandRandy

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Apparently the well loved Cavendish Banana will soon become extinct due to "Panama Disease" a fusarium fungus. Enjoy them while you can. Neat history on the Cavendish monoculture though.

 

The imminent death of the Cavendish banana and why it affects us all - BBC News

"If you need me, I'll be outside" -Randy Wiesner Palm Beach County, Florida Zone 10Bish

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I'd read about this. Sad but probably inevitable in the world of monoculture

Meg

Palms of Victory I shall wear

Cape Coral (It's Just Paradise)
Florida
Zone 10A on the Isabelle Canal
Elevation: 15 feet

I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus' garden in the shade.

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There are hundreds of different edible varieties of bananas in the world ( alot of them are better than Cavendish ). Cavendish will maybe extinct, BUT bananas as fruit will not.

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What a paradox!

We strive to clone animals like racehorses, but run a Cavendish risk if too successful.

I'll bet a well-endowed entity like Monsanto could find a way to insert a fungus-killer or resister gene into the Cavendish to help it survive. (Will people eat it?)

The Beeb article suggests "breeding for diversity". How do you do that? The fungus could do the same.

The hunt for Cavendish 2.0 is on.

Let's keep our forum fun and friendly.

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The dreaded fungus has hit us in the Tully valley .. superior culture will win in the end .

Philippino experts have come up with an organic way to beat it .

  • Upvote 1

Michael in palm paradise,

Tully, wet tropics in Australia, over 4 meters of rain every year.

Home of the Golden Gumboot, its over 8m high , our record annual rainfall.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yawn. Amazing how the media can do a beat up of this story every few years. This is SO OLD NEWS! Anyone familiar with the history of the banana industry will know that when Gros Michel was taken out of commercial production in the 1950s the industry did a quick look around for a cultivar with vaguely similar flavour, and settled on cavendish as a short term  stop-gap. Short term because it was well known to be highly susceptible to a number of diseases, but not the fusarium wilt called Panama disease race 1 that was killing Gros Michel. They DID know that PD R4 kills cavendish. Not to mention Black sigatoka. There were a number of commercial breeding programs started to develop PD resistant bananas at that time, the FHIA hybrids being well known resulting plants.

 

So this news is at least 60 years out of date. The fact that the industry continued to plant monocultures of a highly susceptible plant liable to die at any time has more to do with marketing than logic. Interesting that this story comes up every few years, followed a few days later by a news story telling us the banana can only be saved by genetic engineering. Hard to not see a biotech conspiracy when no none mentions the fact that the real issue is a 60 years+ reliance on a single cultivar group with well known limitations in massive monocultures rather than planting appropriate banana clones suited to every individual site.

  • Upvote 4

Waimarama New Zealand (39.5S, 177E)

Oceanic temperate

summer 25C/15C

winter 15C/6C

No frost, no heat

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Bennz, I agree, I swear I saw the first iteration of this story in the late 90's or early 2000's.  And yet, every year it gets trotted out as something new to stir up concern, etc.

I for one am looking forward to the death of the Cavendish.  Maybe then we'll get some variety at the stores! 

  • Upvote 1

"Ph'nglui mglw'napalma Funkthulhu R'Lincolnea wgah'palm fhtagn"
"In his house at Lincoln, dread Funkthulhu plants palm trees."

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4 hours ago, Funkthulhu said:

Bennz, I agree, I swear I saw the first iteration of this story in the late 90's or early 2000's.  And yet, every year it gets trotted out as something new to stir up concern, etc.

 

This just shows that you are less than 70+ years old! It was still  40 year old news in the 90's.

 

I think it is a concern though. Shows how big agbusiness can continue to create non-sustainable monocultures knowing they will eventually fail, without paying attention to possible niche markets. The same pattern is seen in many crops, to a lesser extent. Yes I am a biased tree-hugging/planting greeny organic-certified farmer, but that doesn't change the issue.

 

The other problem with cavendish monocultures is health issues. Some of the banana plantations use so much chemical input the workers get sick, and the soil health is wrecked. My wife was raised on a subtropical banana farm in Australia, a fairly low chemical use farm compared to the tropical ones further north, but she shares with her 3 siblings and parents  a series of niggly health issues which I believe are caused by chemical exposure.

 

Waimarama New Zealand (39.5S, 177E)

Oceanic temperate

summer 25C/15C

winter 15C/6C

No frost, no heat

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Slight turn here...anyone growing, fruiting Gros Michel (Big Mike) bananas in Southern California?   Would love to give them a go if they make it here and I can get the genuine article.

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I see lots of different bananas at the closest farmers market in Puerto Rico and have many on my farm. No chemicals used that I see anyway and more bananas than I can eat so I have a bunch now in my freezer. 

On a side note found a thrift store gadget for $3 made just for turning frozen fruit ( bananas is the example) into soft serve ice cream like texture. A silly name of Yonanas, but worked great and well worth the tiny cost! I will have fun with other frozen fruit next.

Cindy Adair

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Oh, I nearly forgot. Thanks Randy for the video! 

I enjoyed it all the more since just last week I got unlimited wifi on my phone here!

Such a big deal for me to be able to click on links and check PalmTalk without driving to free wi fi!

Sorry for the diversion...

Cindy Adair

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  • 10 months later...

Chiquita is almost done with Costa Rica as their labour is now expensive compared with other nearby nations.  The Cavendish banana is not as tasty as Gros Michel aka Big Mike.  I'm hoping that gene jumping will be used to get some the best charastics from ancestors including eating quality and disease resistance.  As a "Banana Brat" friend of mine who grew up in Costa Rica and Honduras told me they use a lot of copper sulfate to keep the diseases in check.  As a result the soil is ruined once the banana company is done with it unless it gets a "deep ripping" that tills up soil from 3' or 1 meter down.  That is expensive and they don't do it for that reason.  

Monoculturing anything is problematic.  We do that with corn amongst other crops here in the US.  In the 1990s 90% of all US corn (Maize) was of only two types.  Both got the same disease one year and the nation's crop failed that year causing meat, eggs and milk prices to rise as farmers had to use more expensive replacements and/or import corn from say Argentina and Brazil.  

The Gros Michel banana is still around but in backyards.  

I'm in northern California and I've sucessfully fruited Raja Puri and Cardaba aka Saba for years.  I'm trying California Gold which is one of the up and coming bananas which is now commercially grown in Australia.  I have a few others and will report back from time to time my sucess here.  But I may well move to Palm Springs CA at some point and then I'd have an entirely different climate. 

 

 

Brian Bruning

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5 hours ago, Brian Bruning said:

Chiquita is almost done with Costa Rica as their labour is now expensive compared with other nearby nations.  The Cavendish banana is not as tasty as Gros Michel aka Big Mike.  I'm hoping that gene jumping will be used to get some the best charastics from ancestors including eating quality and disease resistance.  As a "Banana Brat" friend of mine who grew up in Costa Rica and Honduras told me they use a lot of copper sulfate to keep the diseases in check.  As a result the soil is ruined once the banana company is done with it unless it gets a "deep ripping" that tills up soil from 3' or 1 meter down.  That is expensive and they don't do it for that reason.  

Monoculturing anything is problematic.  We do that with corn amongst other crops here in the US.  In the 1990s 90% of all US corn (Maize) was of only two types.  Both got the same disease one year and the nation's crop failed that year causing meat, eggs and milk prices to rise as farmers had to use more expensive replacements and/or import corn from say Argentina and Brazil.  

The Gros Michel banana is still around but in backyards.  

I'm in northern California and I've sucessfully fruited Raja Puri and Cardaba aka Saba for years.  I'm trying California Gold which is one of the up and coming bananas which is now commercially grown in Australia.  I have a few others and will report back from time to time my sucess here.  But I may well move to Palm Springs CA at some point and then I'd have an entirely different climate. 

 

 

Are you growing Gros Michel?  If so, do you have a reliable source you could recommend? 

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Not heard of California Gold here in Australia .

Michael in palm paradise,

Tully, wet tropics in Australia, over 4 meters of rain every year.

Home of the Golden Gumboot, its over 8m high , our record annual rainfall.

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