BALTIMORE, Maryland April 5, 2014 - A fungus has done severe damage to the world's banana crop, threatening millions around the world with food shortages and hunger. The Times of India, in a front page story, calls the threat, "Bananageddon." According to a story in the Times of India, the fungus is called "Panama Disease," or, among scientists, TR4, and it directly threatens a crop which supplies up to one-third of the food calories of over 400 million people world-wide.
There is, as yet, no effective treatment for the fungus. It has already decimated export crops at plantations in Southeast Asia, and has jumped from there to Banana farms in Mozambique and Jordan. There are conflicting reports about whether the quick-spreading, difficult to control disease has now made the most devastating jump of all: to Latin America. The biggest producing area of all is Latin America.
The type of banana that is most frequently grown and exported is the Cavendish Banana. This type was developed in England, amazingly enough, in the 1950's. The Times of India, quoting information provided by the Independent in London, said the banana industry is worth 5.4 billion pounds in English currency. Two of the worlds biggest producers have announced plans to merge within the last month. Dublin-based Fyffes, and America's Chiquita would form the world's largest banana company, the Times of India reported. A news release by Chiquita said, in response to a question from the Independent in London: "While we continue to monitor the situation, as of yet we do not foresee any serious impact for UK banana supplies."
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will warn in the coming days that the presence of TR4 in Jordan and Mozambique means that "virtually all export banana plantations" have become vulnerable unless methods are developed to either stop the spread or, in the alternative, new disease-resistant strains can be developed. The FAO says, in a document obtained by the Independent, that "it is evident that a concerted effort is required from industry, research institutions, government and international organisations to prevent spread of the disease." Worldwide, some 410 million people, most of them in third world areas, rely on bananas for up to one third of their daily intake of calories. There is one scientific estimate that says TR4 has the potential to completely destroy 85% of the volume of the world's banana crop. The pernicious disease has the ability to survive for as long as 30 years in soil. When a banana tree contracts the disease, its core is turned to a black mush. When a banana plantation is infected, it can completely destroy the facility's crop within two to three years. A top senior scientist with links to the banana industry said there are "good grounds" to believe that the disease has already spread to Latin America. The disease spreads easily and is difficult to control because it can be spread in water droplets or in very tiny amounts of soil that become imbedded on machinery or even in shoes. A different disease, Black sigatoka, has wiped out up to 90% of the Caribbean's banana crop since it spread there in the 1990's.
Almost all of the world's banana supply is made up of just one genetic variety of banana: the Cavendish. This variety was developed in England in the 1950's. The Cavendish Banana replaced another variety that was decimated by a very similar disease. The Times of India provided this history of the Cavendish Banana, relying in part on information obtained from the Independent in London: "When the world banana industry found itself in crisis in the 1950s, it was saved by a fruit cultivated in Derbyshire and named after a duke. The Cavendish banana was grown by the gardener and architect Joseph Paxton while he was working for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth House. Paxton managed to acquire one of two banana plants sent to England in around 1830 and began growing the fruit in the stately home's glasshouses. He named his banana Musa cavendishii after the 6th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish. The Chatsworth bananas were later sent to Samoa and the Canary Islands, providing forerunners for the variety which emerged in the 1950s to succeed the Gros Michel or Big Mike - the banana sub-species wiped out by an early version of Panama disease between 1903 and 1960. Cavendish is now the world's single most successful - and valuable - banana, accounting for 47 per cent of all cultivated bananas and nearly the entire export trade, worth £5.3 billion."
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