This recent Hank Green video discusses the decimation of what was once the most popularly grown banana in the world, the Gros Michel. It fell to to Panama Disease but the video doesn't explain why modern phytopathology cannot stop the Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc) fungus which causes the wilt/rot.
Is this a solvable problem or is it an intractable fungus to fight?
by terkistan
1 Comment
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pbi.70178
Fungal diseases are often very difficult to control and expensive to remediate, its almost always better for the cultivar to have natural resistance, in this case we know the receptor that can recognize TR4 in resistant varieties. That resistance is of course dependent on classic pathogen evolutionary pressure so it is always unknown how useful it will be over time.
If you want resistance in existing cultivars, transgenics and gene editing are the most tractable approaches since commercial varieties are sterile triploids to prevent seeds in the fruit. To use conventional breeding you would need to find random sport mutations in the field or in tissue culture or use methods like radiation or chemical mutagenesis.
Conventional breeding is of course always going on, but typically for western markets you’d need to find a resistant variety with excellent fruit storage and texture traits, then compose a scheme to induce triploidy for the seedless trait.
Its a complex issue since so much of it is linked to export markets and familiar consumer buying/taste expectation habits. If the EU and the USA relax gene editing regulations or create categories for cis-genic (same gene inserted from another cultivar) you may see cavendish for quite some time.