Gros Michel Or Cavendish: The Changing Face Of Bananas

BANANAS are no more say The Scientist:

The banana 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 Panama disease. For the past fifty years, all has been quiet in the banana world. Until now.

Bananas…

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, June 2008 | In: Food & Fat, Strange But True, Twitterings Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink