The linkurl:banana;http://www.the-scientist.com/2007/3/1/74/1/ we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one - known as the Gros Michel - was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct.Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies - Chiquita and Dole - because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as linkurl:Panama;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/daily/53628/ disease. For the past fifty years, all has been quiet in the banana world. Until now.
Panama disease - or linkurl:__Fusarium__;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/52853/ wilt of banana - is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be...
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