A deadly fungus is spreading through banana plantations, and the cloned bananas we eat are defenseless. In labs around the world, scientists are trying to find ways to genetically alter the fruit to make it resistant.
The banana, as we know it, is in trouble. In August, lab tests in Colombia confirmed that a fungus that destroyed some banana plantations in countries like the Philippines and India had arrived in Latin America, the heart of the world’s banana export economy. The fungus has no cure—and because the bananas available in U.S. stores are cloned and genetically identical, when the disease kills one plant, every other nearby plant is also at risk.
In labs in the U.K. and Australia, researchers are racing to find ways to save one of the world’s most popular fruits before it’s too late. “I think it was an industry consensus that it was only a question of time before the disease reached Latin America,” says Gilad Gershon, CEO of Tropic Biosciences, a startup using gene editing to try to create a version of banana that’s resistant to the disease. For now, the disease has only been found in Colombia—where the government declared a state of emergency and destroyed crops—but it likely won’t be long before it shows up in Ecuador, which grows most of the bananas sold to the U.S. and Europe. “It’s fair to assume that we’re talking probably about a number of years before this spreads throughout Latin America to all the key banana-growing locations.”