Posted October 23, 2018
Even though there are over 1,000 banana varieties in the world, the most common commercialised banana is a variety called the Cavendish, which makes up 47% of all global production of the fruit. The Cavendish is genetically uniform and grows on trees that are short enough to be easy to spray with pesticides, making it ideal for chemically-based production. The problem is that the Cavendish is falling victim to a deadly fungal pathogen called Tropical Race 4 (TR4). TR4 is a strain of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum cubense that lives in the soil, is impervious to pesticides, and kills banana plants by choking them of water and nutrients. Read more.