Advances in Saving the Cavendish Banana

04/11 16:30 - Advances in Saving the Cavendish Banana
When bananas began to be imported to Europe and North America, they were mostly the Gros Michel banana, but that cultivar was ruined by Panama disease in the 1950s, and ever since then, we've been eating the Cavendish cultivar, which tastes different. Yes, there are other types of bananas, but the Cavendish was thought to be immune to Panama disease. Yet today, a strain of Panama disease called TR4 is threatening to wipe out the Cavendish banana. The normal response would be to breed a new tasty banana cultivar that could resist this disease, but the Cavendish is a sterile, seedless banana, and the trees that grow it are all clones. Banana researchers are on the case. One project is trying to introduce immunity genes into the banana genome by bacterial carriers. Another is trying to directly edit the Cavendish genes. But one project, a collaboration between Chiquita and a crop-improvement company, aims to breed bananas the old-fashioned way, and has produced a Cavendish banana tree that is fully fertile! This means it can be crossbred with other types of bananas to produce a new kind of Cavendish, one that we hope will be more resistant to Panama disease. Read up on the latest research in bananas at The Guardian. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: Forest and Kim Starr) ...