Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

Online Course in Banana Quarantine Techniques

Philippine Lacatan banana tree at market - from the extensive and fascinating Market Manilla website. The Lacatan is the Philippine's "comfort food" banana, and one of the world's most delicious.

One of the most frustrating elements of fighting banana disease (or any disease) is that quarantine actually works - but only in theory. For over a century, attempts to isolate infected bananas from healthy ones have been attempted, and failed. These efforts have, in fact, generally made things worse, because they've often been accompanied by denial on the part of banana producers that the problem needs to be attacked on other levels, as well (or denial that quarantine is mostly ineffective.)

But clean farming can make a difference: it can boost crop yields, and slow the spread of disease - crucially important to subsistence farmers, for whom even cutting a percentage of loss can be lifesaving. And there have been considerable successes in some recent quarantine programs. Pakistani officials are now offering a pilot program in managing banana diseases that's different from traditional efforts, which have usually involved in the field training. This one is all-electronic. In my book, I describe how ambitious field programs in Pakistan failed in the early part of this decade. I don't know whether on-site instruction works better than these self-paced versions - but the Philippines is both a banana paradise (with huge plantations and breeding variety) and a center of banana disease, so the effort is absolutely necessary.

Here's how the course introduces itself to first-time participants:

"Have you experienced tremendous yield loss in your banana due to diseases? Have you tried several methods to combat these, yet all proved ineffective? Well, worry no more for you just found the right niche that’ll shun away your farming woes. Congratulations! You are about to start the journey towards achieving a high quality, disease-free banana. Welcome to the online course on Managing Common Diseases in Banana!"

I guess every school needs cheerleaders. Here's a direct link (registration required) to the nine-part program, which is called "Managing Common Disease in Banana."

Help Flooded Ecuadorian Banana Farmers

Images from Oke's Flickr photostream.

To assist washed-out Ecuadorean banana farmers, fair-trade importer Oke is taking donations to buy a Bobcat earth-mover. It's a worthy cause. Read about it here.

More on fair trade, Ecuador's floods, and rising banana prices here, here, here, and especially here.

Doomsday Vaults and Black Box bananas

The "Fort Knox of Food." From the International Herald Tribune.

The recent publicity about the opening of the "Global Seed Vault" in Longyearbyen, Norway, has prompted some questions about whether or not bananas are included. The vault is 500 meters deep, buried under a snow-capped mountain, and is filled with over a hundred million (!!!) different kinds seeds, all as a hedge against the predicted destruction to plant life global warming may be about to wreak. The project was described as a "backup hard drive" for agriculture by the New York Times (story). But bananas aren't included. Why?

Simple: bananas don't have seeds. And banana plantlets - the primary means of storing genetic material for the fruit - are an impossible fit for the Norwegian project, which can only store the so-called "orthodox" seeds - the kind that can be preserved dry. Storing bananas, as a recent press release from Bioversity International noted, need "human intervention. That's always been the story with bananas. We brought them from the forest thousands of years ago, and we've carried them around the world. They aren't just a product of human enterprise - they're a companion to humanity.

Liquid nitrogen keeps the banana materials at minus 320 degrees fahrenheit (-196 degrees c.)

So, is there a banana bank account out there, working as a hedge against disaster? Yes - it is called the "Black Box" collection, stored at the French Research Institute for Development, in Montpellier, France. The tissue samples there duplicate of those stored at the International Transit Center at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium; that institution is one of the leading center for banana genetic research. "It's a mirror of the need for crop diversity itself," Emile Frison, Bioversity's Director General, said. "Just as humanity needs different varieties of crops, so different crops need different kinds of long-term storage."

That's good news for bananas, which face many present-day external attackers - diseases and pests especially virulent to the fruit, which suffers from declining genetic diversity - that are as destructive as the doomsday scenarios contemplated by the ice mountain project.

(This story is based on a press release from Bioversity. Read it in its entirety here - it includes the story of how the Black Box works, and why bananas require unique storage techniques.)

More great banana art from Gonzalo Fuenmayor

"Cuando las Miradas no Alcanzan," 47x47", oil on canvas, 2005

"Unaited gui Stand," 92 x 44 inches, oil on canvas, 2003*

Gonzalo is an artist from Colombia, site of some of the must brutal violence in the sad history of the Banana Republics. His grandfather worked for United Fruit (Chiquita), and tried - Gonzolo told me in an email - to paint a more sympathetic picture of the banana giant, which was responsible for the massacre of at least 1,000 banana workers during a strike in 1929 (the bloodshed was fictionalized by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in "100 Years of Solitude."

The conflict between differing versions of the story - and Gonzalo's own soul-searching about the relationship between the fruit, his own life, his culture, and his family give his work a high level of intensity (which is enhanced by the size of his canvases - some bigger than eight feet across.) I love these paintings. The feel both documentary and impressionistic, all at once.

Will a weep-less onion lead to slip-less bananas?

You'd cry, too.

Researchers in New Zealand and Japan have engineered what they describe as a "tear-free" onion, according to a report from the AFP wire service. The happy onion was developed by the Crop and Food Research institute. The lead scientist on the project, Colin Eady, described how it was done:

"We previously thought the tearing agent was produced spontaneously by cutting onions, but [a Japanese research team] proved it was controlled by an enzyme," he told AFP from his home outside Christchurch. "Here in New Zealand we had the ability to insert DNA into onions, using gene-silencing technology developed by Australian scientists. The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it doesn't produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn't produce tears."

(read the rest of the AFP article on Yahoo! news)

Genetic modification isn't all that scary if you really think about it. And though nothing may be more valuable than the ability to make tears cease to flow, for bananas - aside from developing one that's friendlier to pedestrians - the mission is more conventional: strengthen the fruit so that it will grow better, resist disease, and reduce the use of harmful chemicals that damage the environment and the health of plantation workers.

More on monkeys and bananas

My friend Tim lived in Costa Rica for almost five years. He confirms not just that our simian relatives eat bananas, but also how they eat them:

"As I remember, they ate them upside down. Used their teeth to pull apart the peel. Bigger monkeys would bite chunks off or/and the smaller monkeys would break off chunks with both hands and sit and nibble or chomp away at the prized package in their hands. Actually it would be cool to get a small video of this on your site. Err...dont mean to tell you what ot do, I just remember it being real cute to watch."

Your wish is my command, amigo:

Tim, by the way, owns a really cool bike shop in Platteville, Wisconsin.

This book (might one day) be printed on banana paper

Note: This entry originally appeared on the Penguin authors' blog, which I contributed to this week.

If you've bought my book, then you know that the subject - saving the banana from a disease that currently threatens it - has, as its background, the notion of monoculture: relying on a single crop, rather than diverse ones, leaving that crop open to all-in-one-blow disasters.

One way to expand bananas beyond the modern monoculture would be to recognize that the fruit is usable for other products. One of the most intriguing of these is paper. The banana "tree" isn't a tree at all - it is a giant herb. That means a lot of things (for example, a banana plant has no bark), but for the sake of making paper, the big advantage is this: a banana plant grows like crazy. A productive plantation can see tiny stems reach as high as twenty feet in a single year. Each "tree" produces one bunch - about 150 individual bananas - of fruit per year; it then gives "birth" to another tree. The process can continue virtually forever. The big question has been what to do with those giant trees, which quickly fall over one they've fruited, and usually are discarded after they've been.

More after the jump; or watch this informative (but very dry) video about the banana paper manufacturing process.

First Pictures - Transgenic bananas in Ugandan field trial

For reasons I go over in the book, I've come to believe - and I never thought I'd feel this way when I started my research - that transgenic, or GM (genetically modified) bananas are the most likely answer to the diseases that now threaten the crop's future. Transgenics are especially key in Africa, where bananas are the primary supplier of calories for millions of people. The loss of local banana crops in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi would be catastrophic.

For years, banana scientists have been fighting to get permission to launch limited trials of the transgenic fruit. Last year, a team led by Rony Swennen, head of the Division of Crop Biotechnics and the Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement at Belgium's Catholic University of Leuven (whew! link ) was finally allowed to begin trials of lab-bred bananas at Kawanda, Uganda. The pictures below, taken January 15 - the plants are about eight months old - are the first to be released of the future fruit. About another five years of testing will be needed to see if these plants resist the diseases - especially an airborne blight called "Black Sigatoka" - that are currently causing drastic losses in banana productivity throughout the African highlands.

Two Fabulous Banana Products

There are a dozen major diseases that affect the banana - most virulent, many incurable (the rest often require enough pesticides to turn you into a lobster.) But how to you recognize these maladies? The American Phytopathological Society (APS) has the answer: a CD-ROM called "Diseases of Tropical Fruits, Citrus, and Sugarcane."

That's right - you'll not only get pictures of the stuff that ails bananas, but you'll also feast your eyes on over 550 photographs of angry fungi, bacteria, viruses, worms, and beetles, on the march against avocado, banana, coconut, grapefruit, lemon, lime, mandarine, mango, orange, papaya, and sugarcane. A bargain at $59.00.

If - for some insane reason - an electronic photo album of plant sicknesses isn't up your alley, the "Banana Bunker" from Cultured Containers might be nice: this is a curved, protective plastic container for your fruit. I've already reviewed one of these - the "Banana Guard" - and though I normally attempt to refrain from commentary that might discomfort, to quote Bob Chipeska, those with "tender sensibility," this has to be said: the thing looks like it belongs hidden under your bed (though I like the accordion center, which presumably stretches to fit any size fruit.) The inventor, Paul Stremple, points out that the product not only keeps your banana safe and unblemished, but also safeguards the contents of your backpack or briefcase from the banana. Price: $4.99.

If only Stremple's masterpiece could extend its protective shield to the sick bananas on the CD-ROM.

Order the CD-ROM. Order the banana protector, or, if you happen to be in New England, buy one - no foolin' - at the gift shop of the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

Is this how Panama Disease will arrive in Latin America?

Photo from Peace Corps online

So far, the banana-growing nations of South and Central America - which supply all of our fruit - have escaped the ravages of Panama Disease, the incurable blight that threatens the world's banana crop. As I say in my book, most scientists believe that the fungus will arrive in our hemisphere; the debate is over when. Panama Disease is soil-borne: it has spread through much of Asia in dirt, water, tools, and vehicles. The malady can leap oceans; it was first seen in Malaysia in the early 1990s. It has moved south, thousands of miles, from island to island and over water, and is now spreading rapidly throughout Australia (see this entry and this one.)

Now, officials in the Philippines - a nation where Panama Disease is a huge problem - say that their nation is going to start exporting bananas to the U.S. This will be the first time American consumers have been offered Pacific bananas, and there's reason to be concerned. On December 25, Philippine agriculture secretary Arthur Yap announced that, following the completion of a pest risk analysis, the U.S. had agreed to allow about 10 million tons of Cavendish bananas from Philippine plantations.

This could mean trouble for Latin America's as-yet-to-be afflicted banana crop.

Are genetically modified bananas Australia's last hope?

Blown-down plantations in Queensland.

Australia has been fighting Panama Disease - the incurable blight that threatens the world banana crop - for nearly a decade. As I noted in an earlier post, that battle has recently become more difficult. Despite measures to quarantine the nation's banana farms, the malady is now spreading. Making matters worse was last spring's Cyclone Larry, which slammed Queensland - where most Australian bananas are grown - with winds of up to 200 mph. Over 85% of the nation's crop was destroyed (plantation managers in Latin America count wind damage - called "blow down" - as among their fiercest enemies.)

Now, Australian growers are desperate to save what remains. Panama Disease may make that impossible. A national tax on bananas has been instituted in order to fund research aiming to create a genetically modified, or GM, fruit (conventional breeding, over nearly 100 years of trying, has failed to come up with a fruit that resists the malady.) GM bananas are controversial - surveys have consistently shown that most people say they'd refuse to eat them - but they may be the only hope for Australia, and the dozens of other countries affected by Panama Disease. "The potential is there to have a thriving industry...but I think with the Panama [disease] we've really got a problem unless we start to tackle it head-on," Tom Day, of the Australian Banana Growers Council, told the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Bananas are not supposed to grow in Centralia, Illinois

But this fellow seems to have done it.

Link: Royster's banana plants yield
fruit after 30-plus years
.

Australia was once thought to be protected from the deadliest banana disease. It wasn't.

PANAMA DISEASE - the malady that threatens much of the world's banana crop, and whose advance is the subject of my book - see this fact sheet put out by the Austrailian government, or read this (detailed) article on the fungal blight - was thought to be well-managed, if not stopped cold, in northwest Australia, one of the world's primary commercial banana growing regions. Quarantine measures put in place by local banana growers and agricultural officials were thought to have been both effective - and a model for stopping the disease.

But Panama Disease is impossible to stop once it jumps whatever barriers are erected against it, no matter how strong or well-thought out. That nightmare scenario is now occuring.