Bananas: No Sex In Years, Extinction Imminent

[zakur]

Bananas could split for good (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2664373.stm)

Edible bananas may disappear within a decade if urgent action is not taken to develop new varieties resistant to blight.

A Belgian scientist leading research into the fruit loved by millions, and a staple for much of the world's poor, has warned that diseases and pests are steadily encroaching upon crops.

The problem is that the banana we eat is a seedless, sterile article which could slip the way of its predecessor which was wiped out by blight half a century ago.

[CurtC]

Wasn't one of Carl Sagan's items from his baloney detection kit the phrase "A Belgian scientist... has warned"?

[rwald]

I thought the tougher part near the bottom of the banana was the seed?

[hgc]

I've heard this about chocolate too.

If you had to pick one, bananas or chocolate, to go extinct, which would it be?

[Andonyx]

Two years ago wans't there supposed to a shortage on the agave plant causing a rise in Tequila? I believe thhis was supposed to be due to a harsh climate as the result of El Nina.

I have never been so drunk as the day they announced that.

Of course, I recall no concurrent increase in the price of Tequila.

[garys_2k]

It sounds like our anti-GM people will again do all they can to prevent development of a disease-resistant strain of bananas, no matter how many people starve because of it. Better to apply the precautionary principle, they will say, than save lives.

Morons. Go back and wreck some automated looms.

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by garys_2k:
It sounds like our anti-GM people will again do all they can to prevent development of a disease-resistant strain of bananas, no matter how many people starve because of it. Better to apply the precautionary principle, they will say, than save lives.

Morons. Go back and wreck some automated looms.

I read a short newspaper column on this story to the effect that it was stoneage man that first identified the mutant edible strain of the banana and assiduosly farmed it. This is actual genetic modification as has been practised since man made the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer i.e. the identification of favourable traits (in this case palatability) and the use of crossbreeding to increase the vigour of this trait or cloning to maintain the trait.

[rwald]

You're talking about us, Gary? I'm all for genetic manipulation, personally, as long as there are proper controls, etc (growing the plants in enclosed greenhouses if cross-pollination is a concern, for example, though this doesn't apply to bananas). I was just questioning the veracity of this scientist's claims.

[CurtC]

Shane Costello wrote:
This is actual genetic modification as has been practised since man made the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmerIt goes back much farther than that. Early man unintentionally domesticated many plants. An example is the almond - naturally, they are very bitter, but every once in a while a tree has a genetic mutation so that it can't make the bitter chemical. Early man found these trees by accident, harvested the nuts, some spilled around wherever he hung out, producing more non-bitter almond trees.

Same thing with peas. Even though they were still hunter-gatherers, man domesticated plants. I got these two examples from the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

[magimix]

There is a fairly big article about this in the current New Scientist. As I understand it (I do not have the article to hand), it's not so much that Bananas were domesticated, but that people found (in effect) mutant bananas that didn't develop seeds properly. These were taken, and cultivated with the use of cuttings and the like.

The spiky stump thing at the bottom of the banana (you know the bit I mean :-), and the blackish streaks in the flesh are the residual remains of were seeds would have been.

All major 'strains' of banana are cultivated rather than bread I think. And therein lies the problem. The pesticides we use on Bananas provide a stringent selective pressure on the things we are trying to get rid of, yet the banana does nto change, does not adapt. One new banana killing bacteria could wipe out the entirety of a particular strain with ease. I believe this happened in the 50's and researchers literally had to trawl the tropics looking for new strains of mutant bananas to cultivate.

Bananas form the staple diet of a large amount of the global population (let alone the financial reliance on the trade of bananas) - if they got wiped out it would not be nice.

[mindless]

I wont miss bananas, I seam to have some sort of mild alergic reaction to them.

[Soapy Sam]

Classic example of the primary advantage of sex;- genetic mixing.
Also the danger in monospecific agriculture of all sorts- selection can't work without variation., usually supplied by sexual crossing.

Major blow to some poor economies if the banana went extinct- and what would we do for banana splits?
Monsanto, get your act together! Save the banana and we might even buy your lousy GM corn.

[sickstan]

Originally posted by rwald
I thought the tougher part near the bottom of the banana was the seed?

There are actually banana seeds, but they are the little brown dots near the point of the wedges when you cross-section your banana and split the three parts. Most of our banana crops are triploid or quadruploid (having 3 and 4 sets of chromosomes, respectively). That's why they're sterile. I'm sure, however, that among the suppliers of GM banana plants have a carefully catalogued stockpile of wild banana seeds. This is precisely what nutcase ELF bastards (I mean that non-perjoratively, of course) would terroristically attack with bombs and gasoline, thinking they'd done us all a great favor.

I think it was a U of Mich. botany facility that was recently attacked by ELF -- they destroyed 50 years of tree seed collection work, one of the most complete collections of natural tree seed in the world. It's great that they destroyed the pre-Dutch Elm heritage so they could enjoy their marijuana and eat their sprouts with a big wide smile on their faces 'cuz they did sumpin' awesom!

[Akots]

I'm allergic to the ghastly things.

And what's one of the the first things you feed a baby?

Mashed bananas. Lovely.

I'm not completely heartless... I am also horribly allergic to cats, but I utterly love them anyways. It's just bannanas that are vile.

[rwald]

If they were quadraploid, why couldn't they reproduce sexually?

[Plutarck]

Um, like, shouldn't we like be saving reproducible samples of these kinds of things, or something?

Then they can be reproduced and variously bred and manipulated in the laboratory before being released again.

However, of course it would suck for ahwhile until the banana trees could reach the age of maturity.


Again, it is obviously a good idea to, you know, not have all your eggs in one greenshouse, or something.

[sickstan]

Originally posted by rwald
If they were quadraploid, why couldn't they reproduce sexually?
Dunno, anybody here know about plant ploidy and sexual reproduction?

[rwald]

From what I know (which isn't very much), many plant species (such as wheat) doubled their chromosome number some time in their evolutionary past. It's a common way for a plant to become reproductively isolated from others of its former species. I mean, there's no logical reason why a 4n organism can't reproduce; you'll just have two tetrads instead of one. So, I'm reasonably certain that quadraploid plants can reproduce sexually.

However, it is important to note that triploid plants cannot reproduce sexually. That's the way that most seedless watermelons are made: they're created as a triploid organism, and then gametes can't form (the extra chromosome hanging around apparently messes up meiosis), and without those, the typical hard black seeds of the watermelon don't form (it seems that the gametes direct the formation of the seeds, or something). So, if bananas are in fact triploid, that would explain everything right there.

[Mark]

Dunno, anybody here know about plant ploidy and sexual reproduction?

Bananas and sex. I wish Freud were here. :D

[DaChew]

Bananas: No Sex In Years, Extinction Imminent

They must have all got married.

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by sickstan:
Dunno, anybody here know about plant ploidy and sexual reproduction?

Originally posted by rwald:
From what I know (which isn't very much), many plant species (such as wheat) doubled their chromosome number some time in their evolutionary past.

IIRC from lectures at college wheat is the most notable example:
www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/mcclean/plsc431/chromnumber/number7.htm

The link points out that allopolyploidy was a vital development that allowed man to make the move from hunter gatherers to farmers, and that this is likely to have kickstarted civilization in the fertile crescent.

[Wayne Grabert]

Shucks, I caught my sister Betty Lou havin' sex with a bananer jus' last week, so's she's doin' her part.

[Hazelip]

False.

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp

[CurtC]

However, the legend deemed "false" by snopes is not exactly the same as the news report. it was obviously based on the news report though.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Andonyx
Two years ago wans't there supposed to a shortage on the agave plant causing a rise in Tequila? I believe thhis was supposed to be due to a harsh climate as the result of El Nina.

I have never been so drunk as the day they announced that.

Of course, I recall no concurrent increase in the price of Tequila.

I have read from other sources that this is a problem with bananas.

Also, that there was a rise in the price of agave, but also that there was a massive planting operation to meet the anticipated demand, hence, the market, in this case, working.

[davefoc]

rwald said:
There are actually banana seeds, but they are the little brown dots near the point of the wedges when you cross-section your banana and split the three parts. Most of our banana crops are triploid or quadruploid (having 3 and 4 sets of chromosomes, respectively).

Could somebody give a little explanation of all this ploidy business.

I was reading about conifers the other day and found out that redwoods are hexaploidy (6 sets). How does this happen? why aren't odd numbers of sets fertile? what exactly does this mean? Are all animals diploidy?