Threat to Australian bananas

[tron07]

That's is the risk of planting the same tree/clone (monoculture), bred for high yield and resistant to certain common diseases. If a new thing that target that culture, it can easily wipe out the entire crop cause its virtually a clone from the original tree.

[Hursticon]

That's is the risk of planting the same tree/clone (monoculture), bred for high yield and resistant to certain common diseases. If a new thing that target that culture, it can easily wipe out the entire crop cause its virtually a clone from the original tree.

True, but I wonder if there were laws preventing this breed from being genetically modified to combat such threats - do you think?

[Burn]

The thing is though, this isn't a new disease, it's been around for decades overseas and in the Northern Territory, they've just never found a way to destroy it.

It's interesting that some have heard about it and some haven't. I've heard from others in town that have spoken to out-of-towners who knew nothing about it.

Some locals are also fearful that people will be put off eating bananas because of it. Though there's no need to be.

The big problem at the moment is a lot of banana farmers aren't turning a profit, the price of bananas are low to the point the market price doesn't even cover production costs. So they don't have a lot of money to put into quarantine procedures.

And yeah, Woolies and Coles could help out, but given how they've been screwing farmers over for years, that won't be happening any time soon unfortunately, nor do I see either the State or Federal Governments stepping in as they're not overly supportive of agriculture up this way.

[Paulbot]

That's is the risk of planting the same tree/clone (monoculture), bred for high yield and resistant to certain common diseases. If a new thing that target that culture, it can easily wipe out the entire crop cause its virtually a clone from the original tree.

Bananas are clones? This finally explains B1 and B2.