Dive Brief:
- Panama disease, a lethal fungus that devastated banana crops in East and Southeast Asia in the 1960s, has gone global, now infecting crops in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia.
- Because the fungus can't be killed, quarantines have been ineffective, and some believe the disease will eventually hit Latin America, where about three-fifths of global banana exports are grown, this could spell the potential end of the world's banana crops.
- This conclusion came after a study published in PLOS Pathogens showed that one strain of Panama disease, called "Tropical Race 4," was the lone infectious agent of impacted crops in various places.
Dive Insight:
Consumers have been demanding more bananas in their foods as the health trend continues, though this latest research suggests trouble for future products.
This isn't the first time this family of diseases has threatened banana crops. Latin America was hit in the late 1800s by Race 1, which Tropical Race 4 descends from. Within 50 years, the banana crop of that time period went functionally extinct because bananas cannot sexually reproduce, and therefore cannot evolve.
Scientists were able to find a cultivar that could resist Race 1, the Cavendish, but Tropical Race 4, a stronger strain of the disease, easily kills off Cavendishes.
The Gros Michel banana, once a ubiquitous variety, was wiped out in the 1950s by a soil fungus as well.
Global banana production is five times higher than in 1960.