“Devastating” fungus may mean end of days for top banana – CBS News

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Publish date: 

Wed 2013-Dec-18

Author: 

Aimee Picchi

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Pests/diseases

Text (summary): 

The song “Yes, we have no bananas” may reflect reality in a few years, if a “devastating” banana fungus isn’t halted or new varieties aren’t developed.

The fungus that attacks the popular Cavendish banana variety — which counts for more than 80 percent of banana exports — has now spread to Africa and the Middle East, Nature reports. 

Previously, the fungus had been only detected in Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, China and Australia, the science journal notes. But now the soil fungus, a strain of Fusarium oxysporum, has been found in Jordan and Mozambique, although it’s not clear how it arrived in those countries. 

The fungus is nearly impossible to get out of the soil, Nature notes. The pathogen rots banana plants, turning their tissues into a “putrefying mixture of brown, black, and blood-red” that smells like garbage, according to a 2011 New Yorker article about the emerging blight. 

“It’s a gigantic problem,” Rony Swennen of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and a banana breeder at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Dar es Salaam, told Nature.

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www.cbsnews.com [English

Locations
Location Coordinates Zoom Relevance Show on map
Taiwan 24°N 121°E 0.632
Costa Rica, Bicol, Philippines 12.4316°N 123.717°E 0.539
Mozambique 18.25°S 35°E 0.528
Jordan, Western Visayas, Philippines 10.6584°N 122.596°E 0.527
Belgium 50.8333°N 4°E 0.508
Indonesia 5°S 120°E 0.478
Philippines 13°N 122°E 0.476
Malaysia 2.5°N 112.5°E 0.475
Australia 25°S 135°E 0.472
Discovery

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Robot discovered

URL: 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/devastating-fungus-may-mean-end-of-days-for-top-banana/

Original language: 

English

Original title: 

“Devastating” fungus may mean end of days for top banana – CBS News

Original text (summary): 

The song “Yes, we have no bananas” may reflect reality in a few years, if a “devastating” banana fungus isn’t halted or new varieties aren’t developed.

The fungus that attacks the popular Cavendish banana variety — which counts for more than 80 percent of banana exports — has now spread to Africa and the Middle East, Nature reports. 

Previously, the fungus had been only detected in Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, China and Australia, the science journal notes. But now the soil fungus, a strain of Fusarium oxysporum, has been found in Jordan and Mozambique, although it’s not clear how it arrived in those countries. 

The fungus is nearly impossible to get out of the soil, Nature notes. The pathogen rots banana plants, turning their tissues into a “putrefying mixture of brown, black, and blood-red” that smells like garbage, according to a 2011 New Yorker article about the emerging blight.