It is called Panama disease. It is the epidemic that threatens to make bananas disappear. The alarm comes from researchers at the University of Washington that banana plantations around the world will face a difficult fate.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Is called Panama disease. It is the epidemic that threatens to make the bananas. The alarm comes from researchers at the University of Washington that banana plantations around the world will face a difficult fate.
The study in question was published in the journal PLOS Pathogens. The person responsible for the Panama disease is a mushroom that from the XNUMXs to the present it would have become such a serious threat as to jeopardize the very existence of banana plantations.
This is probably a problem related tointensive agriculture. In particular, experts fear that this parasite could reach plantations in South America, where more than half of the world's bananas are produced.
The spread of the mushroom would have started in Indonesia and then reached Taiwan and China. The parasite has the scientific name of Fusarium oxyporum and the variant now feared by researchers is called Tropical Race 4 and it is the cause of the diseases that have affected banana plantations in recent years.
So is the time approaching to say goodbye to bananas? It seems that the ways tried so far to stem the epidemic of the Panama disease have not been successful. The new study has come to a truly disturbing conclusion and confirmed what scientists were observing in different parts of the world, namely that banana plantations are suffering from the same disease, linked to the most powerful mutation of the parasite which causes Panama disease.
Under accusation we find the modalities of industrial cultivation of bananas. Commercially produced bananas are grown in very dense plantations, where the plants are very close to each other and all of the same variety, which would never happen in nature.
In short, the industrial cultivation of bananas pays off much more vulnerable plants to attacks by parasites. History repeats itself: in the nineteenth century Ireland went through a serious food crisis due to the parasites that had destroyed the potato monocultures.
As for bananas, will scientists find a solution? Wouldn't it be a good idea to change the production methods?
Marta Albè
Read also:
8 foods at risk of disappearing due to climate change
Climate change: cocoa and coffee are in danger of disappearing
Global scaling: even chocolate at risk due to climate change
