Tropical Race 4 might sound like the latest installment of a popular racing simulator video game but it is actually the term given to a fungus which has infected banana species all over the world, threatening the world’s most popular fruit with near endangerment.
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Banana lore has long held that the bright yellow variety of the fruit – the world’s fourth-most valuable food product after rice, wheat, and milk – is a mere shadow of the banana our grandparents would’ve enjoyed.
Now, a newer, more virulent strain of Panama disease is wreaking that same havoc on the Cavendish and experts fear the banana we know and frequently devour may meet the same fate as the Gros Michel.
According to a research report published in the journal PLOS Pathogen, growers will need to adapt new farming strategies involving the careful monitoring of the banana plants and the quarantine of plants which are found to have traces of the fungus. “Clearly the current expansion, of the Panama disease epidemic is particularly destructive due to the massive monoculture of susceptible Cavendish bananas”. And while it hasn’t reached Latin America yet, it seems inevitable that the producer of 82 percent of the world’s Cavendish bananas will soon fall victim to the ruthless onslaught. To limit the infection, it must be contained, something that hasn’t gone according to plan.
Posters and flyers have been spread all over to banana producers, plantation owners, workers and farm managers to inform them about the risks associated with TR4. As Quartz points out, “Most bananas are grown by small-time farmers in the many poor countries where they’re a staple crop”.
“Research demonstrates that the quarantine measures and information provided around the globe apparently have not had the desired effect”, explained Kema in a recent news release.
The reason that bananas are coming closer to extinction is Tropical Race 4.
The fungus originated in Indonesia and spread from there to Taiwan, then China and then to the rest of Southeast Asia.
“India had about 600 varieties, but over the past two decades the Cavendish has pushed out and replaced many of those”.
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Here’s something to make you go ape – bananas may go extinct. Whether that means finding the next Cavendish or creating a hybrid is to be decided, but for now we’ll have to wait and see.
