Why The World’s Most Popular Banana May Go Extinct | Big Business

the world's most popular banana may be on the verge of extinction similar to humans bananas are also facing a pandemia 99 of bananas exported to developed countries are just one group called the cavendish and the cavendish is vulnerable to tropical race 4 or panama disease a fungus that's now ravaging banana farms across the globe so now you can compare this is tropical race 4 and i have in this banana then the plant looks very healthy one scientist recently developed a line of cavendish that is resistant to tr4 but it was genetically modified in europe the gms are under regulation so we cannot use it so scientists like fernando had to start from scratch to find a solution and they're working against the clock because if tr4 is not stopped it would wipe out cavendish and it's already happening globally we're facing the collapse of a 25 billion cavendish industry so how did we get here can we save one of the world's most consumed fruits before it's too late you probably know the cavendish banana you can find this type of banana in every supermarket around the world they're so popular because they're yummy they look nice and they ripen as they transport it's high yielding so it's got quite a thick skin and so it travels well and tastes pretty good comes in its own package but there's a problem they are sterile they don't have seeds no seeds means cavendish bananas are clones of each other so the only way to propagate them is in vitro or by taking new growths called suckers from the base of an older plant but since they're all genetic copies cavendish are really vulnerable to disease the domino effect if you have everything wrong with just one clone one disease can kill everything plant by plant that's exactly what's happening with tr4 one of the deadliest plant diseases out there the fungus doesn't spread to humans but it does eventually kill the banana plant so no more fruit grows scientists guessed the fungus probably started somewhere in southeast asia in the 90s and quickly spread across the globe then in 2019 it hit latin america combined with the caribbean that area grows 75 of the world's to make sure the fungus doesn't spread farms across colombia have implemented biosecurity measures eva norte 2 was one of the first farms in the country to detect tr4 workers wash down and disinfect the underside of any car that comes in just in case there's infected soil hiding in the treads antonio's team built cement pass throughout the farm so on their way to harvest workers are walking on open soil once they've reached the area ready to be harvested workers walk through a sanitizing foot bath made of ammonium promedio quinoa out in the field workers measure the banana fingers to make sure they're ready to harvest they're usually ready about 12 to 13 weeks after the fruit stem shows up one worker cuts down a 65 pound bundle while the other catches it and carries it to the cableway that cableway system brings all those banana bunches to the packaging plant first workers sanitize the bunches with chlorine [Applause] then they check the bananas for quality and any signs of fusarium damage they cut off and throw bushels into a huge tank that bath not only preserves the bananas but washes off any of the latex that naturally occurs on the peel the bananas get cut into smaller bunches of five to seven workers wrap the banana carefully so they don't bruise that wrapping has holes in it so the bananas can ripen as they travel no more than four hours after the bananas are harvested those boxes end up on pallets loaded onto trucks the bananas are trucked to the nearby port where they're moved onto ships this shipment's headed to the u.s with equipment bananas and people moving along this global supply chain it's easy to see how the fungus could spread if tr4 does sneak into a farm the colombian government has laid out strict guidelines for containing the fungus that means they found symptoms like the yellowing of the leaves is splitting of the same once tier 4 is identified in a plant you can't just kill that one plant the fungus goes about 10 feet deep into the soil once the pathogen is in the soil is almost impossible to eradicate so you have to kill off all the plants in that area [Music] foreign to keep operating the rest of the farm evan norte ii followed the government's three-zone plan the injected herbicide kills all the plants in zone a addition that tarps so birds won't land on the fungus and spread it around there are also canals around the zone to keep any water away from the infected area in zone b called the buffer zone finally in zone c plants are allowed to grow but they're constantly monitored for signs of tr4 jose estimates biosecurity has cost this farm as much as 5 million dollars since 2019 so they're pricey but the measures are working at keeping the fungus at bay magdalena these biosecurity measures have contained the fungus in colombia and kept it from spreading to ecuador the largest exporter of bananas in the world but fungus can wipe out an entire fruit variety if not stopped we know because it's happened before in the early 1900s a banana called gross michel was the most popular but by the 1950s one strain of the panama disease wiped out the whole production of gross michelle luckily cavendish was resistant to that first strain so it took over as the banana of choice the problem was banana companies built their entire supply chains around this one cavendish variety in 2019 they exported 20 million bananas and supported millions of jobs globally but now the cavendish is also vulnerable the history repeats itself now with the tropical race for and the cavities cooking bananas like plantains are also at risk for tr4 a risk for a food security because the plantains are staple food in latin america in africa and many other countries they are part of our daily diet so yeah the newest race of fusarium is scary for both cavendish and plantains but this time around we have advanced science researchers across the globe are working toward one goal this guy actually invented a banana that did just that back in 2019 dr james dale announced that his team had successfully injected the dna from a resistant banana into a cavendish and it worked we found the solution we have a line of cavendish which appears to be completely resistant to tr4 the thing we haven't done yet is a taste test and that's because the gm they look smell feel exactly the same as every other banana we've only changed one gene but no one would buy his miracle banana because it was genetically modified foreign in the eu most member countries have either partly or fully banned gmos in the u.s they're allowed but feared one argument against gmos is that these modified plants would quickly spread their genes and kill out biodiversity but with bananas that's not a problem the genes don't move because they are stirrups you can grow a gm banana next to a non-gm banana for 50 years and the gene will not move from one to the other incredibly frustrating there's a solution but it's it's a scientific solution but not a political solution so scientists had to go back to the drawing board using what they learned from james to play the non-gmo game fernando is a breeder for key gene a genetics company in the netherlands and he thinks the best way to get around gmo regulations is through traditional breeding meaning you take two different types of bananas the cavendish and one that is resistant and you essentially have the mate and their kid is hopefully resistant to panama disease but still tastes good like cavendish gross breeding or traditional breeding is something that happens every day in nature so the bees are pollinating the different flowers with other flowers so that's what we are doing here we are acting as bees fernando has found a few resistant bananas to cross with cavendish but most of them are not even edible bananas are the bananas that are full of seeds like this one and across those with a cavendish is hard they are sterile very difficult to breed is not impossible so you can try to cross but you need to do it many many many times to get only a few seats for james to make that first gmo banana it took him nearly 10 years since our first field trip for those future bananas that are traditionally bred it'll take just as long it will take lots of years because the life cycle of the banana is quite slow but the longer it takes to traditionally breed a resistant cavendish the more the disease spreads and the more strains of fusarium could be released fernando says there's a bigger picture way to attack this problem diversity take tomatoes for example you go to the grocery store and there may be 10 or more different types of tomatoes cherry vine beef roma that's diversity so if one tomato gets in trouble it won't be a huge loss fernando and his colleagues have the same vision for bananas we have red bananas pink bananas why not try to incorporate that into the market so that you can go to the supermarket and have a complete bench of different options of bananas that you can choose there are hundreds of different banana varieties around the world a friend of mine collected one up in papua new guinea that he said if you didn't know it you think you're eating a strawberry now so amazingly different flavors and diversity would also help farms but if you have different types of bananas grown together probably one banana will be more resistant than the next one so that one can stop the spreading of the disease to the next plant so why haven't companies diversified because it's too expensive and complicated to change a 25 billion dollar industry built around a monoculture so until a solution is found these biosecurity measures will have to be the short-term fix for keeping the big business of bananas alive [Music] you

Channel: Insider Business

Views: 5,515,925

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, banana, farm, fruit, colombia, latin america, GMO, harvest, ecuador, supermarket, grocery store, consumer, retail

Id: nhPEErJnErU

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Alvarius]

I swear I've seen this same story every year for the past ten years.

[u/Gnapstar]

The first 60 seconds:

One scientist recently developed a line of Cavendish that is resistance to TR4

Great!

... but it was genetically modified

?!?! Why do some people have so much hate against GMO?

[u/drainisbamaged]

Sucks. But we've done this before. Cavendish isn't the OG banana

[u/[deleted]]

Sounds like speculators are about drive up the market price of bananas just before main harvest time, like every year, the same story at the same time.

[u/sunshinedze]

everyone saw that coming

[u/sendmeyourjokes]

ITT: People just commenting on the title and not actually watching the video.

[u/pm_me_ur_demotape]

If there is money in selling bananas, I have confidence that they will find a way to persevere

[u/[deleted]]

It's not popular for its flavour though. It's a very good banana for producers which has led to it being the only choice for many (most?).

[u/[deleted]]

The banana we eat today the cavendish is ALREADY genetically modified. This is click bait.