The bananas in your supermarket and that you eat for breakfast are facing functional extinction due to the disease Fusarium wilt of banana (FWB), caused by a fungal pathogen called Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense (Foc) tropical race 4 (TR4).
Good research but as they point out, the much simpler solution is simply to grow a variety of different bananas instead of one clone across the entire earth.
I wonder if there is an ureported reason that they haven’t done that. Because I think your idea makes sense, and surely they must have a reason for not doing it.
My understanding is they store well and consumers are used to them. There are definitely many other varieties available in local markets in tropical areas, some of which are better tasting IMO. But it’s just one of those things about global commodity trade that they want them all to be identical.
Consumers adapt to observable diversification if the product is superior and significantly different. They are almost totally ignorant if the differences are small and the product is similar. That’s not the reason.
The issue is that most of the banana production is handled by very few companies. Changing varieties complicates their internal processes, will cost them money, and they will not do it until forced to do so.
Good point. The banana industry is absolutely gargantuan (and pretty awful, but that’s an aside) so it may be that their logistics require the fruit to be a certain size, weight, shape, etc for efficiency.
also like, a lot of banana variants are so much more interesting and people go out of their way to get them, you ought to be able to charge more simply for providing something unique to people.
It probably comes down to the difficulty of of transport. We have a local fruit in the Eastern US, the Pawpaw. It’s a fantastic fruit and has a history of cultivation in the area. But, it does not transport well and has to be eaten pretty quickly after they ripen. So, it’s not a wide commercial success.
and the convenient bit is that it would all be true, because most people in the west have at most experienced 3 species of banana in their lives.
also bananas are honestly really fucking cheap in comparison with other fruits, i’d happily pay another dollar per kg for some more interesting bananas.
Likely consistency of the product. The Cavandish cultivar is a clonal population; it makes then very susceptible to disease but also very consistent in terms of size and taste over time. The original Gros Michel cultivar was similar but then devastated by panama disease. It was also supposedly tastier and better.
But Plantains are also bananas and totally different in terms of taste and consistency. If you were to freely cultivate bananas there is a huge range of possible tastes and textures.
Thats not to say its not feasible; a range of cultivars could be developed. Its also worth bearing in mind that most farmers do not generally develop new cultivars; their business is mass producing the fruit. People experimenting with new cultivars are effectively fringe and it’s likely difficult to break into a market where consumers expectations of what a banana is are so fixed. Most people don’t even think of a plantain as a banana. Its hard to break in and make money with different bananas as people expect a banana to he a Cavendish.
Unfortunately consumers and retailers are the enemy of variety. Even fruits where people known there are varieties, such as Apples, are dominated by a couple of commerical cultivars. And that extends across into many plants and even animal products - there is huge commercial pressure for homogenous consistent products which in the shirt term out weighs long term risks of bad agricultural practicea.
The original Gros Michel cultivar… was also supposedly tastier and better.
The banana flavoring used in candies and baked goods came from the Gros Michel, so if you like banana flavored things, but don’t like actual bananas, this is why.
The current banana is cheapest to transport. They can be harvested when still unripe and ripe along the way, so no expensive fast transport is needed. They’re are many other varieties, but this one was the easy moneymaker.
Good research but as they point out, the much simpler solution is simply to grow a variety of different bananas instead of one clone across the entire earth.
I wonder if there is an ureported reason that they haven’t done that. Because I think your idea makes sense, and surely they must have a reason for not doing it.
My understanding is they store well and consumers are used to them. There are definitely many other varieties available in local markets in tropical areas, some of which are better tasting IMO. But it’s just one of those things about global commodity trade that they want them all to be identical.
Consumers adapt to observable diversification if the product is superior and significantly different. They are almost totally ignorant if the differences are small and the product is similar. That’s not the reason.
The issue is that most of the banana production is handled by very few companies. Changing varieties complicates their internal processes, will cost them money, and they will not do it until forced to do so.
Good point. The banana industry is absolutely gargantuan (and pretty awful, but that’s an aside) so it may be that their logistics require the fruit to be a certain size, weight, shape, etc for efficiency.
also like, a lot of banana variants are so much more interesting and people go out of their way to get them, you ought to be able to charge more simply for providing something unique to people.
It probably comes down to the difficulty of of transport. We have a local fruit in the Eastern US, the Pawpaw. It’s a fantastic fruit and has a history of cultivation in the area. But, it does not transport well and has to be eaten pretty quickly after they ripen. So, it’s not a wide commercial success.
Label it new, special, and exotic, and people will buy it. Marketing is a hell of a drug.
and the convenient bit is that it would all be true, because most people in the west have at most experienced 3 species of banana in their lives.
also bananas are honestly really fucking cheap in comparison with other fruits, i’d happily pay another dollar per kg for some more interesting bananas.
Likely consistency of the product. The Cavandish cultivar is a clonal population; it makes then very susceptible to disease but also very consistent in terms of size and taste over time. The original Gros Michel cultivar was similar but then devastated by panama disease. It was also supposedly tastier and better.
But Plantains are also bananas and totally different in terms of taste and consistency. If you were to freely cultivate bananas there is a huge range of possible tastes and textures.
Thats not to say its not feasible; a range of cultivars could be developed. Its also worth bearing in mind that most farmers do not generally develop new cultivars; their business is mass producing the fruit. People experimenting with new cultivars are effectively fringe and it’s likely difficult to break into a market where consumers expectations of what a banana is are so fixed. Most people don’t even think of a plantain as a banana. Its hard to break in and make money with different bananas as people expect a banana to he a Cavendish.
Unfortunately consumers and retailers are the enemy of variety. Even fruits where people known there are varieties, such as Apples, are dominated by a couple of commerical cultivars. And that extends across into many plants and even animal products - there is huge commercial pressure for homogenous consistent products which in the shirt term out weighs long term risks of bad agricultural practicea.
This person knows their bananas.
The banana flavoring used in candies and baked goods came from the Gros Michel, so if you like banana flavored things, but don’t like actual bananas, this is why.
The current banana is cheapest to transport. They can be harvested when still unripe and ripe along the way, so no expensive fast transport is needed. They’re are many other varieties, but this one was the easy moneymaker.