A deadly virus that has been killing banana trees in East Asia and Southeast Asia since the 1960s has been spreading to other continents since 2013. The fungus that cannot be killed or contained is now destroying the fruit's crops in other regions and within time will reach Latin America, where over three-fifths of the Earth's exported curved yellow fruit is grown.
This latest study about the banana virus' spread was published in PLOS Pathogens.
The Panama disease has already reached South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. It has even spread to the Australian continent.
The study's co-author Gert Kema is a banana expert at Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands. He explained that researchers discovered one clone of the Panama disease known as "Tropical Race 4"
Tropical Race 4 started in Indonesia. It probably spread to Taiwan, then China, and later to the entire Southeast Asia region, according to Quartz.
Experts have been trying to destroy the fungus and protect healthy banana trees. However, they have been unable to achieve both goals.
It takes time for the virus to spread. However, once it does within time it can wipe out a country's entire banana crops. Taiwan now exports just 2 percent of the fruit that it did when Tropical Race 4 was discovered there during the late 1960s.
The problem is that today's commercial bananas are all clones. Thus, they cannot sexually reproduce and evolve to protect themselves from diseases.
The good news is that the Cavendish banana can resist Race 1. That is the cousin of the current virus' strain.
However, Tropical Race 4 is a more powerful fungus, and can easily kill Cavendish plants. It threatens the $11 billion worldwide banana industry.
Another issue is that small-scale farmers grow most bananas. Exports only make up 18 percent of total banana production.
There is also an X-factor. Worldwide banana production is five times higher ow than it was in 1960.
However, some people argue that the banana extinction story is one that is told as propaganda. The theory is that it is told to make genetically modified bananas seem to be the only way to prevent bananas from becoming extinct, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
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