I just ate a banana, a yellow one. I don't often think of bananas as being my favorite fruit, mostly because they are so common and so cheap, but if bananas were rare, hell, I'd really think of them as a delicacy.
The bananas that are found in western stores and supermarkets are Cavendish bananas, and they constitute about 10% of the world's crop of bananas.
The banana and the plantain are actually a vital source of food and many other products and about 400 million people depend on them.
It's been in the news in recent times that the banana is under threat because of certain funguses, but actually the real threat is limited to the Cavendish banana.
Bananas are not bred, but they are all cultivars, clones of one another. Many banana species are asexual and do not produce seeds. Thus it is expected that this variety will be subject to diseases and this has happened, with some exaggerated hype surrounding it, to Cavendish bananas grown in South America and South Asia.
I say that the event is expected because there are historical examples of this type of thing happening with cultivars, the most famous such case resulting being the Irish Potato famine. Like the Cavendish banana, the Irish potato in the 19th century was all cultivars that were nearly genetically identical. Thus when the blight struck Ireland there were no resistant varieties and the crops were almost wiped out. The potato as a species was originated in what is today the Peruvian Andes and the Irish potato - which is only one of many varieties - represented only a tiny subset of wild stocks. Because of the importance of the potato in the world food supply and the experience of the Irish famine, scientists have been working in the Andes to catalog and perserve the strains that did not become commercially important.
Here is a recent popular press account of this effort.
Here's a somewhat more elaborate description.
The banana originated in India, and, again, there are actually many varieties of the plant, including some wild varieties growing in remote rain forests - or formerly remote rain forests that are now shrinking because of human intrusion.
Bananas grown all over the world are descended from Indian bananas and they have been ravaged by diseases. In the 1950's a variety of banana known as "Big Mike" was destroyed in central America by a disease known as "Panana disease," a fungus, called "fusarium wilt." This disease was first found in Suriname and quickly spread. The emergence of this same disease has been observed in South Asia and is causing wide concern.
Another banana disease is Black Sigatoka, a fungus that is found on leaves. It effects all varieties of bananas, some more than others, and is spread because of the use of banana leaves as packing materials.
One of the things we now take for granted but shouldn't - besides the banana - is the United Nations and its important efforts in addressing all issues facing all of humanity - issues other than war.
The United Nations has a agency called the FAO, the Food and Agricultural Organization, which is working to understand and preserve banana diversity.
3 May 2006, Rome - Shrinking numbers of wild bananas in India, the world’s premier producer, are causing concern at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO is committed to preserving agricultural biodiversity.
The first session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which came into force in 2004 under the auspices of FAO, will take place from 12-16 June in Madrid.
India is the world’s biggest banana grower, with an annual production of 16.8 million tonnes, or over 20 percent of total world output of 72.6 million tonnes in 2005.
But overexploitation and the loss of forests as a result of encroachment and logging, slash-and-burn cultivation and urbanization are causing a rapid loss of wild banana species that have existed in India for thousands of years. Among them are the ancestors of the Cavendish variety, the large, pulpy dessert banana which currently accounts for virtually all of world trade, amounting to nearly 20 million tonnes a year.
Cooking bananas and plantains – eaten fried, boiled, baked or chipped -- are the staple food of 400 million people in the developing world, while bananas are also used to make fibres and beer. In India, they play an important role in traditional medicine.
FAO press release.
This is important work and the kind of human effort that does not deserve to be ignored. This also touches in the broad interest of all humanity in preserving wild forests, forests that are threatened worldwide by climate change, population growth and similar threats.
It may seem trivial to speak of bananas and potatoes, but it is a most important human issue and I thought I'd raise in it a brief throwaway diary.