New Bananas and no bananas
| There is a type of fungal disease called Panama TP4 which gets into the soil in banana plantations and eventually chokes off the plant’s ability to produce bananas. Once it is in the soil, it is nearly impossible to remove and that land can never again be used to produce bananas. The fungus does not affect humans at all, but is a death sentence for bananas and the end of a banana farmer’s livelihood and dreams.
It has already done irreparable damage to the Northern Territory banana industry, and now a potentially positive case has been found in far north Queensland. The environment around Tully is perfect for growing bananas and if this disease takes hold it is going to have a devastating impact on the industry as a whole and consumer across the country. This is a major potential issue. The specific property in the Tully Valley has been isolated and an exclusion zone set up to try and stop the spread of the fungus. Simply walking on that soil and then going to another farm can be one way of spreading it. |
Biosecurity Queensland Chief Biosecurity Officer, Dr Jim Thompson said; “The suite of tests will take up to 4-6 weeks to complete. The property owners are working with Biosecurity Queensland to control and contain any disease and mitigate the risk of further spread. They’re exceptionally proactive and already have strict on-farm biosecurity measures in place on their property. The property owners are erecting exclusion fencing around the area to minimise the potential risk of disease spread while diagnostic testing is completed.”
| So while a major potential problem is rearing it’s ugly head for the banana industry, elsewhere in Australia researchers at the Queensland University of Technology have been busy developing bananas with extra pro-vitamin A.
This is an amazing humanitarian development, because there are some 700000 children worldwide dying from pro-vitamin A deficiency annually. The genetic modification project has been ongoing for ten years and the near $10million funding was provided by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. |
Professor James Dale, lead researcher for the project, said; “What we’ve done is take a gene from a banana that originated in Papua New Guinea and is naturally very high in pro-vitamin A but has small bunches, and inserted it into a Cavendish banana. Over the years, we’ve been able to develop a banana that has achieved excellent pro-vitamin A levels, hence the golden-orange rather than cream-coloured flesh.”
The Plant Biotechnology Journal published an article about the new banana in volume 15 issue 4.