To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Bananas
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:10:38 -0500
On Oct 29, 2003, at 2:11 PM, breen@fedcoseeds.com wrote:
"400 varieties in test tubes! that is the anti-christ of what i
thought i was doing in this group! to save them for us but not for
them? i hope all those test tubes break."
I agree with much of what you said, but not the above. Those 400
varieties in test tubes can be used in many ways, including helping the
people who live where bananas grow. I was astonished when I learned
that all "ordinary" bananas were the same cultivar - talk about
dangerous monoculture!! It's also sad that so little research,
breeding, and gene preservation is being done on such an important
fruit. I guess the multi-nationals have been slow to catch on to the
importance of genetic diversity. So much for the greater efficiency
and wisdom of private industry as compared to government programs. But
those 400 varieties are a start. With luck, some of them will prove to
be commercially viable cultivars that require less fungicides. With
good planning, someone else is busy breeding bananas (and I'm sure
there are some bananas that aren't sterile) to fill more test-tubes
with baby tissue-culture plants that can be tested for flavor,
shipping, and disease resistance. There's been lots of breeding done
on seedless grapes - surely it's possible to breed seedless bananas.