Erin McElhone 3rd Period: Saying Goodbye to Bananas

     When you go into your neighborhood supermarket you don't see the whole story behind your bananas. There is really only one kind of banana sold in the United States, the Cavendish, however you can pick and choose in other places in the world like Puerto Rico. Bananas all over the world are facing a deadly disease called Tropical Race 4. The earlier version of this fungus attacked the Gros Michel banana that once dominated global banana trade, completely wiping out the commercial plantings. This new version of the fungus has already made its way through China and Southeast Asia. It has also been reported in Australia and Southern Africa. So far, the fungus has not spread to Latin America, but it can travel on the smallest particle of soil, even on a pair of shoes. So most visitors remove their shoes before coming near the fragile fruit.

     Scientists are currently looking for a banana that is tolerant towards the Tropical Race 4 and could possibly replace the Cavendish. The experiments in greenhouses at Wageningen University, with about 200 different kinds of bananas tested shows less than 10% as being resistant. But the plants that resist the disease, so far, are not candidates to replace Cavendish. Some are wild varieties, with fruit full of seeds. Others are plantains, starchier relatives of the bananas that are popular in North America and Europe. So some scientists are saying goodbye to bananas. Plant breeders have a different plan. They think that they can take those few disease-resistant bananas and mate them with others that taste good, creating offspring that might contain the best traits of both. However, there's a special complication when breeding bananas. Breeders have to start with bananas that have seeds; otherwise, there is no offspring. But eventually their efforts have to produce a variety with no seeds, so that people will eat it.

     This problem with the fungus has been repeated, and I think will continue to be repeated itself, even if we go through every type of banana on the globe. There are many political arguments that have been repeated and brought up throughout the years just as this fungus; at times it seems like there is no answer to these repetitious problems. But, if we were able to find an answer to what seemed like the biggest problem of its time, slavery, I think we can find the solution to this banana problem.

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