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Bananas and bees were both supposed to be extinct by now. Yet here I am in my chair eating a banana while a bee keeps body-slamming the ceiling light directly above me.
The messaging on the "save the bees" was really poor. The honeybees are fine, but the big concern is all the thousands of species of wild bees that are at risk.
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/1/19/23552518/honey-bees-native-bees-decline
The Cavendish banana would have never gone fully extinct, it would have just become too fragile to be commercially viable, as happened to the Gros Michel in the 1950s.
As for the Cavendish, Central America was able to greatly slow the advance of Panama Disease with fire. Lots and lots of fire. It's still taking down plantations and is still news when it crosses into another South American country.
But we have recently identified the specific gene in our cloned cultivars that makes them so vulnerable to Panama, so a cure may now be possible. But as it stands we're still, potentially, one failed quarantine in Asia away from needing to replace the Cavendish banana.
Can we get rid of that gene in Gros Michel too?
I don't know if the gene in the Gros Michel has been identified. Though it is likely the same one, I know there is a Gros Michel/Cavendish hybrid that is resistant to Panama Disease - so possibly not. In any case, there are efforts to bring it back.
I have heard that the banana candy flavour is based on that and have really wanted to try it ever since and I hope we can preserve it for future generations too.
Thanks. That’s exactly the type of material I’m looking for.
The idea that a monoculture can easily fail due to disease is not a conspiracy, and has and will happen.
I know, just not with nearly as much haste as often said in the past.