An international team of scientists hope they can save bananas from extinction after working over a decade to find a cure.
You may not know it from the rows and rows of them in supermarkets, but the famous yellow fruit is close to dying out – at least in the form we know and love.
A lethal fungus is spreading ‘like wildfire’ through crops, rotting roots and blocking stems so the plants wilt and die.
If unchecked, it is set to bring ‘banana apocalypse’, wiping out the Cavendish banana which is pretty much the only variety eaten by the general public.
But a saviour could be coming, after researchers made a breakthrough in understanding why the microbe is so virulent.
They hope it could help us slow it down, or even stop it completely, averting the Bananapocalypse.
Researchers worked out that the dangerous strain’s genome creates more nitric oxide – and that its virulence was ‘greatly reduced’ when two genes related to this were eliminated.
Lead author Yong Zhang said that identifying these genetic sequences ‘opens up many strategic avenues to mitigate, or even control, the spread’.
The paper was published in Nature Microbiology today, explaining how Fusarium Wilt of banana is caused by a fungal pathogen called Fusarium oxysporum which is found in soil.
The strain causing concern (known as TR4) is suspected to have originated in Indonesia and Malaysia. It was first reported in Taiwan in 1989, and since then has spread to Australia, the Philippines, China, and more recently the Middle East, India and Vietnam.
In 2019 it spread to Columbia, and then to Peru two years later, causing major concern for supply as these two countries in South America make up the biggest banana-exporting region in the world.
If the Cavendish banana dies out, it would be the second mass banana extinction since the 1950s.
Before that, the dominant banana eaten in the world was the Gros Michel. In a chilling warning of what could be coming, it was almost wiped out entirely by a different strain of banana wilt – and the more disease resistant Cavendish was developed to replace it.
Now it risks the same fate.
Li-Jun Ma, professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and the paper’s senior author, said: ‘We have spent the last 10 years studying this new outbreak of banana wilt.
‘We now know that the Cavendish banana-destroying pathogen TR4 did not evolve from the race that decimated the Gros Michel bananas.
‘TR4’s genome contains some accessory genes that are linked to the production of nitric oxide, which seems to be the key factor in TR4’s virulence.’
Despite there being more than 1,000 types of banana, it’s rare to find anything other than Cavendish in UK shops.
Professor Ma pointed out that even if this fungus is tamed, bananas are still vulnerable because there is such lack of diversity in which ones we eat.
She said: ‘When there’s no diversity in a huge commercial crop, it becomes an easy target for pathogens.
‘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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