The fusarium mushroom could destroy the world's favorite banana – again – Quartz

You have eaten exactly the same type of banana hundreds, probably thousands of times before. Sometimes he was comically tall; to others, usefully size palm for a convenient snack. Ripe or greener, in transit or freshly landed from the market, sick or healthy – from a genetic point of view, it's the same old banana tree every day. And that's a problem.

Virtually all supermarket bananas in the world are Cavendish, a variety chosen for its strength and ease of cultivation. In the 1950s, he replaced the Gros Michel, a comparable banana that had virtually disappeared from Panama disease caused by a soil fungus. Also known as Fusarium mushroom, downy mildew blacks bananas from within. Once a plantation is infected, its fruit is spread. Even decades after the banana leaves, the spores drag in the soil and may re-infect the crops.

In the last 30 years, the fungus has ravaged banana plantations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. At present, the Colombian Institute of Agriculture and Fisheries declared a national emergency after the discovery of the fungus in the province of La Guajira, in the north-east of the country, in June. Nearly 170 hectares (420 acres) of plantations have since been quarantined.

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It's never good news that a culture gets sick. But for the Cavendish banana, this is particularly disturbing. This is because banana is based on a single genetic clone, producing a global monoculture extremely vulnerable to epidemics.

This is not necessarily the case. There are more than 1000 varieties of bananas in the world. Although not all are as tasty or robust as Cavendish, their genetic diversity gives them a very important element: the defenses against the disease. At the same time, the lack of research and development on a safeguard banana has left Colombia's third agricultural exporter, widely open to attack.

The world loves bananas. The huge commercial pressure means that you will probably always find a group of these nice yellow guys at the grocery store. But if the Cavendish falls, as it threatens to do, the agronomists will work hard to find a replacement.

An alternative might be to use the genome sequences of banana and Fusarium mushroom to design a Cavendish 2.0 that is resistant to late blight. The question of whether she can cope with other, yet unknown infections is an open question.