Bananas don't usually figure much in the news. True, there were a few occasions in recent years when the ubiquitous yellow fruit slipped off the health and food pages and onto Page 1. Mostly those stories concerned the long-running dispute between the United States and the European Union over barriers in the banana trade -- a confrontation that sorely tested the World Trade Organization's credibility as a mediator. But that was the banana's longest stint in the limelight, unless you count the Bananas in Pajamas boom that dates back to the early '90s. For the most part, the world's second most popular fruit (after tomatoes) keeps a pretty low profile.
Then on Jan. 15 came some news that bounced the banana right back into the headlines. According to Britain's New Scientist magazine -- admittedly not the top banana in the news business but a respectable source nonetheless -- a European expert believes that the fruit could actually be threatened with extinction inside of 10 years. That item definitely caught people's attention. Headline writers, in particular, went bananas at the prospect, coming up with a whole bunch of bad jokes: "Yes, We Will Soon Have No Bananas," "Bananas Could Split for Good" and "Bananas on the Skids."
Seriously, what was Dr. Emile Frison, of the French-based International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain, or INIBAP, talking about? Simply this: Because the edible banana, as opposed to the inedible wild variety, is seedless and sterile, it lacks the genetic diversity that could give it resistance to pests and diseases. Two diseases in particular -- Panama disease, which wiped out an older banana variety in the '50s, and black Sigatoka -- are mutating as fast as scientists can produce new fungicides. Unless scientists resort to biotechnology and genetic manipulation, Dr. Frison warned, the Cavendish, the global standard in bananas, is likely to disappear.