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Banana Extinction is in the Horizon Once More

Until 50 years ago, the world's export banana was Gros Michel. Said to taste better, last longer, this cultivar of bananas was resilient and did not require artificial ripening. In 1965 this species became commercially extinct because of a fungal disease, the Panama disease, that started in Central America and spread across the world's commercial plantations. The disease affected the vascular system so that banana plant is unable to absorb water. With no other alternative but to burn the infected, the banana industry was thrown in a quandary until it found the new cultivar for world export.
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