Cavendish (banana)

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A 'Cavendish' banana

'Cavendish' is the name of the most economically important banana variety in the world today . It is named after William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire , who planted bananas from China in his Chatsworth House greenhouse as early as 1830 . Almost all dessert bananas traded worldwide today belong to the Cavendish variety, i. H. are ultimately clones of this one banana tree from the Duke of Devonshire's greenhouse.

history

In 1830 the gardener Joseph Paxton first planted banana trees in the greenhouse of the Chatsworth House country estate in the Peak District in northern England. According to stories, he was inspired to do so by the illustration of a banana tree on a Chinese wall paper in the house. Or maybe he was simply looking for exotic fruits that his employer William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, could offer his guests as dessert. In November 1835 the Musa Cavendishii perennial bloomed for the first time and in May of the following year Paxton was able to harvest more than 100 fruits, one of which won a prize at the Horticultural Society exhibition in 1836. A few years later, Lord Cavendish gave two offshoots of the perennial to John Williams, who went on a journey to Samoa as a missionary . Williams came to Samoa, but was killed there by the Samoans. One of the perennials survived. From 1853 onwards, Europeans from Chatsworth House spread banana cuttings throughout the Pacific; In 1855 they also came to the Canary Islands .

properties

The 'Cavendish' banana ousted the ' Gros Michel ' (also known as 'Gran Michel' or Jamaica banana), which was preferred in the first half of the twentieth century , because it was easier to use industrially. The lower growth height of the perennials and their higher resistance to storms contributed to this. Since they could be planted more densely, crop yields doubled when they were grown. It also seemed to be more robust against some types of fungus that attacked the 'Gros Michel' as a result of cultivation in large plantations: The yellow Sigatoka fungus was managed with fungicides , the Panama disease could not be combated on the 'Gros Michel'. The mushroom species Tropical Race 4 and Black Sigatoka threaten the plantations today and show the problem of monocultures. Genetic modifications should make the banana resistant to fungi.

Due to its thinner shell, however, 'Cavendish' is much more sensitive to the stresses and strains of transport, which is why it requires a great deal of effort. In addition, it turned out that despite their insensitivity to the types of fungus that afflicted the 'Gros Michel', they are still more susceptible to fungal attack than the varieties used previously, because other fungus strains have now appeared.

Growth, harvest, processing and transportation

After twenty weeks, a red flower forms on the banana plant, which is up to five meters high, from which the bananas grow. Individual bananas are called fingers, ten to twenty form one hand, the entire fruit cluster (cluster) comprises several hands and weighs around 35–50 kilograms. A tube made of thin plastic protects the bananas from the weather and insects. The 'Cavendish' banana fruit stands are harvested as soon as the green bananas are at least 24 millimeters thick, around twelve weeks after flowering. They are cut off with a machete and hung on a small cable car that takes them to the washing station. They are washed and divided into handy smaller finger groups, so-called “clusters”, with four to eight bananas, packed in banana boxes made of corrugated cardboard or newly made of plastic and transported to the port. They are mostly located on the coasts of the main export countries Ecuador , Philippines , Costa Rica , Guatemala and Colombia . They are shipped on container ships at a constant temperature of 13 ° Celsius to the destinations in America and Europe. In ripening plants in the destination country, they are gassed with ethylene in order to restart the interrupted ripening process, which takes 4 to 10 days at 14 to 18 ° Celsius. After that they are ready to be sold.

Fungal diseases

The 'Cavendish' (like the 'Gros Michel' in the 1950s) is threatened by two types of fungus:

  • The Tropical Race 4 (TR4) from Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense , the causative agent of Panama disease, has been attacking the roots of banana trees since the 1990s. In Indonesia , Malaysia , Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia, many banana plantations have already been destroyed by this fungal attack. With pesticides could not stop the spread of the fungus. Due to today's travel activity, there is a risk of its worldwide spread.
  • The perennials in the Caribbean and Central America, on the other hand, are threatened by the Black Sigatoka mushroom, which emerged in the 1970s and is considerably more aggressive than its predecessor, the Yellow Sigatoka . The black Sigatoka can be combated with pesticides, but it is also developing resistance and has become so persistent that in some growing areas half of the harvest becomes unusable due to its infestation.

Since the 'Cavendish' banana trees have been growing virgin ( parthenocarp ), i.e. not through fertilization and seed formation , but vegetatively through the formation of shoots that are genetically identical to the mother plant, they can hardly develop natural resistance to the fungi, because this would require extensive genetic mutations.

For this reason, intensive research is being carried out into the development of genetically modified banana varieties, including variants of the Cavendish that are expanded with resistance genes . In 2017, a group of researchers at the Queensland University of Technology introduced a resistance gene from a wild variety of banana into the Cavendish banana using genetic engineering methods. This banana is resistant to Panama disease and has comparable yields to the original Cavendish banana.

The Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research (FHIA) prefers the traditional way of breeding more robust varieties. The first small successes are achieved by crossing wild, fertile bananas. The first bananas grown from it are insensitive to the Black Sigatoka and the Panama disease, but taste more like apple than banana. The FHIA-01 'Goldfinger' was registered for a patent in 1994 (US Patent PP08983) and the FHIA-03 'Sweetheart' is already being grown in Cuba.

However, wild bananas and cultivated forms that are only regionally limited are also endangered, especially in India.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pedro Arias, Cora Dankers, Pascal Liu, Paul Pilkauskas: The World Banana Economy 1985–2002 . Ed .: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations . 2003, ISBN 92-5105057-0 , ISSN  1810-0783 (English, online ).
  2. ^ Banana facts and figures. FAO, accessed July 2, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b Duncan Leatherdale: The imminent death of the Cavendish banana and why it affects us all. January 24, 2016, accessed on July 5, 2018 .
  4. ↑ The Cavendish Banana. peaklandheritage.org.uk/, July 19, 2002, archived from the original on July 18, 2011 ; Retrieved January 13, 2011 .
  5. ↑ Christian Seiler: The banana is a stick. Portrait of our favorite fruit. Das Magazin, Tamedia, Zurich October 1, 2016, page 13
  6. ↑ Christian Seiler: The banana is a stick. Portrait of our favorite fruit. Das Magazin, Tamedia, Zurich October 1, 2016, pages 10–15
  7. ↑ Nina Sigrist: The perfect banana. Migros Magazin Zurich, October 10, 2016, pages 38–45
  8. ↑ Dale, J., et al. (2017). "Transgenic Cavendish bananas with resistance to Fusarium wilt tropical race 4." Nat Commun 8 (1): 1496. doi: 10.1038 / s41467-017-01670-6
  9. ↑ Article in Scilogs on the Cavendish fungal attack

Web links

Commons : 'Cavendish'  - collection of images, videos and audio files