4 ms·

We bred bananas to be like they are, and then used clones thereafter. They never looked like Cavendish in nature. There is nothing stopping banana breeders from

by ksaj 7y ago

We bred bananas to be like they are, and then used clones thereafter. They never looked like Cavendish in nature. There is nothing stopping banana breeders from doing it again. And now we're stuck with a mono culture. Why? Because there is something stopping the production of varietals. Patents are stopping advancements from happening. Just like with corn, except things are worse with bananas. That's the real problem. Not GMO or whatever other straw man. Mono-species fail in the end, and then we create new technologies to cover for it, instead of simply breeding new variants within the species - because patents and profitable monocultures.

echelon 7y ago
> Patents are stopping variety from happening. Just like with corn, except things are worse with bananas. How can the patents not have already expired? Bananas have been the same roughly all of my life, unless I'm wildly misremembering. Surely there is no way the Cavendish is still protected by patents.
- ksaj 7y ago
  Mostly the damage is already done. But at least there are new cultivars coming out sooner or later. Here's one: https://patents.justia.com/patent/PP28625 https://patents.justia.com/patent/PP28625 But how new is it? As I've alluded (it would take a full article to really get into this), even this new cultivar is... Cavendish. And it's patented. Just like all the other Cavendish bananas that comprise the only bananas you can ever find unless you happen to live in Southeast Asia and can find them in the wild. BTW: Bananas you remember are not the bananas your grandparents would remember. There's a long history. The monoculture of bananas is fairly recent in terms of history, but for you and I, we've only ever known Cavendish.
  - ferzul 7y ago
    What are ladyfinger bananas, if not non-cavendish bananas available in supermarkets (so cultivated) in southeast Australia (so outside of southeast Asia)? Sure, they're more expensive than cavendish so i only take them when regular bananas are unavailable. But they're functionally non-cavendish bananas available in a place they aren't native.
    - ksaj 7y ago
      I didn't know until researching my reply here, that Canada (where I live) actually locally farms the mini Ladyfingers available in our markets. Talk about 180 degrees of separation. Similarly they are expensive, and people mainly opt for the larger/cheaper Cavendish. I always thought the mini Ladyfingers are more child friendly both for size and for sweetness, but rarely see them outside of fancy fruit salads. It's still very much a mono-culture, even when there are outliers. So yes, my black/white statement should have been more of a 90/10 fuzzy grey one. There is very little (financial) incentive to go up against Cavendish in an attempt to compete, because anything you need to do to find a tasty cultivar with thicker skins and stable shipping/handling will continually run into Cavendish related patents in the process. BTW: Sadly, even though the Ladyfinger bananas are distinct from Cavendish, they are equally susceptible to the same deadly plant diseases. If one disappears, so probably does the other. Our temporary diversion is back on track with the subject at hand.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    We used to have a Gros Michel monoculture, and now we have a Cavendish monoculture. There's not a great candidate for the "next" monoculture, in that TR4 affects all the varieties that ship well. And bananas, because we want seedless varieties, favor cloning which favors monocultures (both directly because they're, you know, clones; through slow propagation which in turn makes scaling a variety pretty capital intensive, etc.)
TylerE 7y ago
Fruits are funny. Many of what we think of as normal fruits are actually weird hybrids that can ONLY be reproduced by cloning/grafting. Most citrus, most apple varieties, anything "seedless"

by ksaj 7y ago

echelon 7y ago

> Patents are stopping variety from happening. Just like with corn, except things are worse with bananas. How can the patents not have already expired? Bananas have been the same roughly all of my life, unless I'm wildly misremembering. Surely there is no way the Cavendish is still protected by patents.

ksaj 7y ago
Mostly the damage is already done. But at least there are new cultivars coming out sooner or later. Here's one: https://patents.justia.com/patent/PP28625 https://patents.justia.com/patent/PP28625 But how new is it? As I've alluded (it would take a full article to really get into this), even this new cultivar is... Cavendish. And it's patented. Just like all the other Cavendish bananas that comprise the only bananas you can ever find unless you happen to live in Southeast Asia and can find them in the wild. BTW: Bananas you remember are not the bananas your grandparents would remember. There's a long history. The monoculture of bananas is fairly recent in terms of history, but for you and I, we've only ever known Cavendish.
- ferzul 7y ago
  What are ladyfinger bananas, if not non-cavendish bananas available in supermarkets (so cultivated) in southeast Australia (so outside of southeast Asia)? Sure, they're more expensive than cavendish so i only take them when regular bananas are unavailable. But they're functionally non-cavendish bananas available in a place they aren't native.
  - ksaj 7y ago
    I didn't know until researching my reply here, that Canada (where I live) actually locally farms the mini Ladyfingers available in our markets. Talk about 180 degrees of separation. Similarly they are expensive, and people mainly opt for the larger/cheaper Cavendish. I always thought the mini Ladyfingers are more child friendly both for size and for sweetness, but rarely see them outside of fancy fruit salads. It's still very much a mono-culture, even when there are outliers. So yes, my black/white statement should have been more of a 90/10 fuzzy grey one. There is very little (financial) incentive to go up against Cavendish in an attempt to compete, because anything you need to do to find a tasty cultivar with thicker skins and stable shipping/handling will continually run into Cavendish related patents in the process. BTW: Sadly, even though the Ladyfinger bananas are distinct from Cavendish, they are equally susceptible to the same deadly plant diseases. If one disappears, so probably does the other. Our temporary diversion is back on track with the subject at hand.
- mlyle 7y ago
  We used to have a Gros Michel monoculture, and now we have a Cavendish monoculture. There's not a great candidate for the "next" monoculture, in that TR4 affects all the varieties that ship well. And bananas, because we want seedless varieties, favor cloning which favors monocultures (both directly because they're, you know, clones; through slow propagation which in turn makes scaling a variety pretty capital intensive, etc.)

TylerE 7y ago

Fruits are funny. Many of what we think of as normal fruits are actually weird hybrids that can ONLY be reproduced by cloning/grafting. Most citrus, most apple varieties, anything "seedless"