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investigator have made a breakthrough in the race to save the world’sbananasfrom a devastating disease that could pass over them out , according to a new report .
The bananas we eat , call Cavendish banana , are threatened by a flora - killing disease call fusarium wilt . This disease has already pass over out other banana tree varieties , and it devastated banana tree product in the 1950s .
The bananas we eat are at risk of extinction because of a disease called fusarium wilt.
But in the newfangled study , investigator found that the disease extend threatening bananas today did n’t evolve from the mental strain that caused so much damage in the 20th century and that there may be a fashion to control its spread .
The team ’s findings , published Friday ( Aug. 16 ) in the journalNature Microbiology , could help avoid an at hand " banana tree apocalypse , " according to astatementfrom the University of Massachusetts Amherst .
" The variety of banana tree we eat today is not the same as the one your grandparents use up , " study senior authorLi - Jun Ma , a professor of biochemistry and molecular biological science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst , said in the statement . " Those sure-enough ones , the Gros Michel banana , are functionally extinct , victim of the first Fusarium outbreak in the 1950s . "
A banana plant with fusarium wilt disease.
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There are many species of hazardous banana tree and we farm legion variety . Today , the most unwashed banana institute in store is the Cavendish banana from the speciesMusa acuminata . Almost all of the global banana exports come from this salmagundi , according to theRoyal Botanic Gardens , Kewin the U.K.
Cavendish bananas were breed to resist the strain of fusarium wilt that wiped out Gros Michel bananas . However , a second irruption of fusarium wilt disease that did affect the Cavendish variety emerged in the 1990s , and the Cavendish has been under threat ever since . Like bananas , fusarium wilt has many variety , and each touch a different works horde , according to the statement .
When researchers compared 36Fusariumstrains from around the world , they found that the one make the current outbreak uses genes that produce fungal nitric oxide to attack hosts , according to the study . The team does n’t sleep together how these genes lead the disease to taint Cavendish banana tree . However , they found that the disease ’s virulence — its capacitance to damage a host — was reduce when the factor were extinguish , so reduce the nitric oxide could be key to controlling the disease .
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Although the new report could help save our favorite bananas , Ma noted that monocropping — growing the same crop every year — is the underlie problem look bananas , and they will be vulnerable to disease as long as we continue to rely on a single salmagundi .
" When there ’s no variety in a vast commercial craw , it becomes an easy quarry for pathogen , " Ma say . " Next metre you ’re shop for bananas , try some different potpourri that might be available in your local specialty foods depot . "
