Banana is the most popular fruit in the world but may soon be known as the rarest as a fungus destroys crops in every country it's grown in. A group of scientist at Wageningen University has traced the fungus responsible for the destruction of the crops in Southeast Asia.
These fungi have been found to jump into other continents and continue to jeopardize bananas all over the world. The results of the finding which were published in the PLOS Pathogens, showed how the fungus continuously spreads. They have also gave out a warning saying that if it hits the biggest banana growers in Latin America, the world famous fruit will most likely die off.
"Tropical Race 4", the banana-killing strain has reached as far as South Asia, Australia, China, the Philippines, Jordan, Mozambique, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Africa in 2013, it has left behind an infested and ruined banana plantations.
The plant's death comes from an untreatable disease the fungus causes, which might threaten the world's most popular banana variety, the Cavendish. The disease spread through a soil-borne fungus and water that runs up to the plants roots, which kills the plant and the surrounding banana plots, that will leave them contaminated for a long time.
Another type of banana crop, the Gros Michel, found in Costa Rica and Panama, was driven to near-extinction in the 1960s. It took the researchers 20 years before they were able to pinpoint the exact fungus type, fusarium oxysporum f.sp,cubbense, was the culprit of the devastation.
Once it comesin contact with its host, it saturates the plant's root system and remains in the soil up to 30 years even after the host have died. After the fungus wiped out most of the Gros Michel crops, there were only a few plantations in Thailand that was left. The farmers that runs these plantations, who were left with the almost extinct banana variety, started to grow the Cavendish bananas.
