Ecological changes are creeping upon us because of climate change, say many experts. Our food supply, so dependent on a narrow range of factors –including temperature, rain and changing ecosystems– is threatened as well.
A big challenge for banana cultivation with warmer temperatures is the spread of pests and diseases. Agricultural experts caution that the most common type of bananas may actually go extinct due to a deadly tropical disease sweeping across crops around the world. The Panama disease originated in the 1950s. It's a fungus that attacks the plant’s roots. It can’t be chemically controlled and a particular strain is seen as a threat to the Cavendish bananas that grow the world over. So far the only way of containing the disease is by quarantining large swathes of farmland, but it has already spread to Africa, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Central America. Experts fear that if Panama disease reaches South America, the Cavendish banana is doomed.
According to information¸ a way to save the bananas could be in the form of a banana tree from Madagascar. It’s a wild species immune to the Panama disease – but it is also inedible, and researchers are trying to create a hybrid of the two species to produce an infection-resistant strain. The problem is that there are only five mature Madagascar banana trees in existence.
