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The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#51

Post by colordrops »

jedberg wrote: post #44
colordrops wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that people should rely on science when determining the safety of food products, it's disingenuous to imply that selective breeding and GMO are the same thing, as it ignores the fact that many if not most GMO foods are transgenic with genes from other species and even kingdoms of life that would never find their way into the genome through selective breeding.

But you don't know that. Maybe they would randomly get that mutation in some generation that we would then breed for. All we're doing is speeding that up with science.

How exactly would an apple "randomly" acquire a jellyfish gene?

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#52

Post by fouc »

latchkey wrote: post #34
himlion wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I was just going to say how varied and incredibly tasty the local Lao bananas are. I wonder if we have different taste or you've tried different ones than I have. The ones I like best are the very small "good smelling bananas" (ກ້ວຍຫອມ).

I found that when you first bite into the outside, it was good, but as you got into the center, it had a very bad taste that ruined the experience of the outside. It was a weird and totally unexpected thing for me since I normally love bananas. I tried stopping at several different vendors (stands) on the roadside to make sure it wasn't just one. I was mostly north of Vientiane, so maybe the southern ones are better.

There's definitely a few different strains of bananas in asia, it's not uncommon to see 2-3 different types of bananas being sold right next to each other in the markets. The most obvious indicator to me is the size of the individual bananas, the smaller ones taste pretty weird to me.

OH, and also I assume there's a bit of a taste difference with the bananas we're used to because they weren't dosed in Ethlyene to hasten the ripening. (In western countries the grocery warehouse has a room for spraying bananas in ethlyene before delivering to the grocery stores)

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#53

Post by bad_user »

jedberg wrote: post #28

> Other scientists—most notably, James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia—are testing genetically modified disease-resistant Cavendish bananas, but public acceptance of GMOs could prove a significant obstacle to their widespread adoption. This is the problem right here. The lack of science education. A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO", i…

> * A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO"*

Not really. The difference is that selective breeding takes a lot of time and for the species that we eat today we've had hundreds to thousands of years to observe if it harms us or not.

When new drugs or foods get approved for consumption, the tests being made are for how our body affect the eaten food, and the assessment being made is for how safe acute short term exposure is.

But we are not doing long term studies on safety, because those are super expensive. We basically don't know what happens with chronic exposure over decades. And plants in particular have toxins, as a natural defense against pests, and most of those toxins are harmless to humans, or removed via cooking (like what happens with legumes), however some toxins can have an effect on mammals and we won't notice it until we've had decades to consume that plant and maybe come up with cooking methods to deal with it.

Personally I'm not interested in being a lab rat.

> The lack of science education.

I think this goes on in both camps ;-)

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#54

Post by xbmcuser »

roywiggins wrote: post #45
icxa wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty up to date on the science myself, and I still consider myself anti-GMO for a host of reasons, little to do with the science. My objections are more philosophical. two primary reasons: hubris and greed. The hubris to think we know which varietals are the best and will continue to be the best. We may go all in on one species or variant and then turns out an unknown bacteria we have previously no clue about w…

> The hubris to think we know which varietals are the best and will continue to be the best. If they don't grow GMO Cavendish, they will pick some other variety and grow that everywhere, like they did after the Gros Michel went under. GMO doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for monoculture at all. > the power of being able to still survive on pure nature's means We haven't been able to do that since the dawn of agricul…

Many of us that are considered anti gmo are more anti patent for food genes rather than of anti gmo. The developing world mostly has agricultural economy now Western companies are trying to horn in that as well. A few years ago an American company tried to patent and stop Pakistan and India from selling a rice variety called Basmati by modifing it genes and trying to patent it. When its come to gmo the trust deficit in rest of the world is not just about the science but of the western companies and their patents.

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#55

Post by adrianN »

colordrops wrote: post #51
jedberg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't know that. Maybe they would randomly get that mutation in some generation that we would then breed for. All we're doing is speeding that up with science.

How exactly would an apple "randomly" acquire a jellyfish gene?

The same way that fish eventually acquired the "lungs" genes.

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#56

Post by axaxs »

So, my wife is from SEA. I never bothered to look into the name of their bananas, nor do they know it by any other name, but they are delicious. They are small, and grow more in a straight line than a bunch. While a Cavendish is mostly subtle, these taste like real fruit, more hearty and definitely sweet. So, my question is, why are we in USA stuck with these dud bananas, even in the absence of the Gros Michel?

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#57

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

jedberg wrote: post #28

> Other scientists—most notably, James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia—are testing genetically modified disease-resistant Cavendish bananas, but public acceptance of GMOs could prove a significant obstacle to their widespread adoption. This is the problem right here. The lack of science education. A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO", i…

>This is the problem right here. The lack of science education. A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO", it's just that one is done in a targeted manner and the other relies on random luck in the mutations.

At this point anti-GMO == anti-science

People may have philosophical objections, but young earth creationists, climate change deniers, and anti-vaccine advocates all believe what they do primarily because of philosophical objections.

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#58

Post by colordrops »

adrianN wrote: post #55
colordrops wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would an apple "randomly" acquire a jellyfish gene?

The same way that fish eventually acquired the "lungs" genes.

That's not how it works. There are not one universal set of genes for "lungs". When two species develop a similar characteristic, the genes are still completely different.

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#59

Post by tomc1985 »

bad_user wrote: post #53
jedberg wrote: post #28

> Other scientists—most notably, James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia—are testing genetically modified disease-resistant Cavendish bananas, but public acceptance of GMOs could prove a significant obstacle to their widespread adoption. This is the problem right here. The lack of science education. A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO", i…

> * A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO"* Not really. The difference is that selective breeding takes a lot of time and for the species that we eat today we've had hundreds to thousands of years to observe if it harms us or not. When new drugs or foods get approved for consumption, the tests being made are for how our body affect the eaten food, and the assessment…

I get that, but it's not like the body isn't accustomed to a wide range of food inputs. We know what chemical structures are deeply harmful to the body and what are digestible; assuming GMO variants are not totally different from the original we can rely on heuristics to determine their toxicity, can't we?

It seems a little silly to outright dismiss GMO foods as long as they do not deviate too far from their parents

Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America

#60

Post by TylerE »

ksaj wrote: post #32
jedberg wrote: post #28

> Other scientists—most notably, James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia—are testing genetically modified disease-resistant Cavendish bananas, but public acceptance of GMOs could prove a significant obstacle to their widespread adoption. This is the problem right here. The lack of science education. A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO", i…

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…

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"

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