We are coming into a world crises of bananas with only one variety in cultivation - the Cavendish. More than 100 billion bananas are eaten each year worldwide. That's how many tears will be shed if there are no bananas.
Did you know that the bananas we ate used to be the Gros Michel, and in the 1950s it was practically wiped out by a banana wilt fungus.
Cavendish replaced it - smaller and less tasty - able to grow in infected soils. There is now a new fungus that is more deadly than the one that wiped out the Gros Michel.
Supposedly there is nothing to replace the Cavendish right now that is fungus-resistant. Over 2,000 varieties - some are full of black seeds, hard as rocks. Others are starchy and not sweet.
Isn't this the perfect storm for a hybridization frenzy? There are at least 60 major banana collections worldwide. But the world's largest is in Belgium.
The banana genebank in Leuven maintains 1547 banana accessions of both edible and wild banana species. Since most bananas do not produce seeds, the 40 scientists working at the ITC cannot simply store seeds of the bananas as is done for other crops at the Artic Svalbard Seed Bank. Instead, each of the 1547 banana accessions is represented by 20 tissue-culture plantlets that are kept on nutrient medium at 16°C. At this temperature, the small banana plantlets grow minimally and only need to be transferred to new growth medium once a year.
So we should be optimistic that we can handle this crises given the vast number of bananas eaten each year. Let's hope we are looking at something besides Cavendish in an image soon.
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