The Wildly Infectious Banana Plague

[TreeCo]

Though not about trees the spread of disease in bananas very much parallels the spread of tree diseases such as Dutch elm disease, Oak wilt, etc. I found this video interesting and imagine a few others here at the Buzz will too.

 

[Reach]

I did not watch the video, but I'm not surprised that a plague affecting bananas would have a major impact. Nearly every banana tree in commercial production today is a Cavendish banana, and the Cavendish banana can only be reproduced essentially by cloning it, so every banana tree and commercial production is genetically identical, therefore susceptible to the same diseases.

A few years ago I recall reading something in an article sounding the alarm that if a disease came up that did effectively get past all of the control chemicals sprayed on these trees, it could decimate the world banana production.

 

[Bart_]

I saw another documentary saying that there was one major banana type change due to a disease wipeout situation. Didn't get far enough yet to see if this vid covers that info.

 

[Matias]

I did not watch the video, but I'm not surprised that a plague affecting bananas would have a major impact. Nearly every banana tree in commercial production today is a Cavendish banana, and the Cavendish banana can only be reproduced essentially by cloning it, so every banana tree and commercial production is genetically identical, therefore susceptible to the same diseases.

A few years ago I recall reading something in an article sounding the alarm that if a disease came up that did effectively get past all of the control chemicals sprayed on these trees, it could decimate the world banana production.

...again. I've heard that the Gros Michel (sp?) was way better than the Cavendish, but it succumbed to a fungal plague. They are actively breeding a replacement because the demise of the Cavendish seems all but inevitable