Smoothie bars may need to make contingency plans.
Banana Republic
A deadly infection responsible for wiping out a commercial variety of bananas back in the 1950s and 1960s has once again reared its ugly head in recent years, threatening to make extinct the entire supply of the world's most popular fruit.
To eradicate this banana disease, dubbed fusarium wilt, scientists have been sifting through its genetic makeup for the last decade and may have found a breakthrough to tame this fungal pathogen, as detailed in a new study published in the journal Nature Microbiology.
The researchers, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found that the dominant variety of fusarium wilt isn't exactly the same strain as the one that endangered Gros Michel bananas, which were once the banana of choice in grocery stores across the world.
Most crucially, the scientists have found that this strain of fusarium wilt, which is now threatening the existence of the ubiquitous Cavendish banana, the commercial variety that replaced Gros Michel bananas, kills the plant by producing nitric oxide.
And knocking out the genes for nitric oxide can potentially tame this disease, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, or Foc tropical race 4 (TR4) in shorthand.
"Identifying these accessory genetic sequences opens up many strategic avenues to mitigate, or even control, the spread of Foc TR4," the paper's lead author Yong Zhang said in a statement about the research.
Factory Farms
This particular infection of Foc TR4 first appeared in the 1970s and has been quickly spreading across the globe, potentially impacting the nutrition of whole communities, not to mention untold amounts of trade.
It's an especially devastating disease because it's hard to eradicate. Banana farmers would have to abandon a contaminated field of bananas in order to control it.
Knowing the disease mechanism now gives banana lovers a fighting chance, but the scientists warn that the real culprit behind the spread of this deadly pathogen is that commercial banana growers cultivate bananas in monoculture plantations, essentially factory farms in the tropics.
"When there’s no diversity in a huge commercial crop, it becomes an easy target for pathogens," UMass Amherst professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and principal researcher Li-Jun Ma said in a statement. "Next time you’re shopping for bananas, try some different varieties that might be available in your local specialty foods store."
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