[0:05]All right, this is going to be fun. If you live somewhere in North America, or Europe, or now even China, then you most likely share this experience. Your local supermarket carries a basic variety of food and vegetables, waiting to be purchased throughout the year. And among them, of course, the banana.
[0:23]This, at least for me, has always been like that. Bananas were always there. The perfect compliment to activities or sport, a quick way of satisfying hunger, or for fancy occasions slurp this a milkshake.
[0:36]Few people ever really put much thought into it. To most of us, the banana is a simple, yellow, tasty, yes, but not at all extraordinary fruit. But what if I told you that I'm pretty sure you and I have eaten a banana picked from the exact same tree?
[0:52]Yes, correct. Not species or kind, the exact same plant. And this one tree has turned the world's agriculture upside down. Be used as a weapon to overthrow entire countries and perfected the trade and value chains of the global food industry, from the fields in Costa Rica or Malaysia to your next supermarket.
[1:10]But now, a tiny little fungus known as the Panama disease, means that this billion dollar industry could collapse.
[1:17]The banana would suddenly disappear out of our lives. I know, Vice, Tony Harris, CNBC, and many other channels have already covered this topic.
[1:26]But what's even more fascinating is what we actually can do about it. The way to rescue the fruit, if this is what we want, might be through genetic modification.
[1:36]As such, the banana could be our way out of a totally messed up agricultural system that needs a complete reboot. Why? Because we have to make our crops fit for future threats and needs.
[1:45]The fate of the banana is a story about something much bigger. It's about monocultures and the decaying of the richness of our planet. It's the question whether we can or want to do something about it, and whether we are bold enough to rethink the system.
[2:00]The banana truly is an outstanding fruit. Its history is deeply connected with ours, from the beginnings ofism to worldwide exploitation, trade, and colonialism.
[2:10]So, short disclaimer at this point. Many fascinating stories around the banana, from Central America to the Providence of Banana Republic. The current crisis the global industry faces due to the Panama disease, has been covered by the usual suspects on our most favorite YouTube channels.
[2:27]And the main more or less similar way, at some points, even strikingly similar. The links are posted below, so if you haven't seen them, go ahead and have a look.
[2:32]But what staggered me the most, and this is something those channels paid little attention to, is that the solution to save the banana is actually out there.
[2:39]What's preventing us from implementing this theoretically oven ready solution, opens up a much more fundamental, yet vital discussion. The future of Europe requires innovative action.
[2:49]Through centuries of perfecting and maximizing agriculture, we've maneuvered ourselves into a situation where our crops in general are not only a source of harm to biodiversity and a threat to our planet, but also extremely susceptible to new challenges, such as draws or diseases.
[3:04]And while wheat and corn might be the father and mother of global monocultures, the banana is the wonder kid. And now, with little time left to save the fruit, the question is whether the way out of this mess really is genetic modification. But how?
[3:16]To understand this issue much better, I figured that a crash course in bananalogy might come in handy. This is the banana that most of us are familiar with, the Cavendish. Or musaminata as the species is scientifically called.
[3:28]There are four types of Musa, which only two are edible for humans. And these contain a different combination of A and B genes. The Cavendish is a AAA hybrid, a combination indicating that it isn't found in wild.
[3:40]The banana originates in Southeast Asia, where its wild relatives grow in all different types, shapes and forms.
[3:47]From the deep jungle all the way up to the Himalayas, you can find green, brown, orange, or even blue bananas. Some can be eaten raw, others are meant to be cooked. And India is the banana capital, roughly 700 different types.
[3:58]But when humans became sedentary, we started domesticating the fruit alongside other crops, breeding it to accommodate our needs. Thousands of years of agriculture narrowed the number of bananas down to only a few.
[4:10]The banana reached Africa with an already very limited gene pool. It was brought there by Arab traders in the 1200s, and then became an integral part of the Central African diet.
[4:19]Fun fact, the scientific word Musa originates from Arabic, where the fruit is called Mavuz. And our name banana, or Banan, means finger in Arabic. Anyway, Africa is where Europeans eventually encountered the fruit.
[4:30]And they did what they do best. They took it across the Atlantic and exploited it to the max. We've wiped out former Central and South American rainforests and paved them with endless miles of banana plantations.
[4:45]All of them planted with one single, genetically identical infertile crop, the so-called Gro Michel and then its replacement, the Cavendish. This left the fruit totally defenseless against possible diseases or climate alterations.
[4:58]Yes, the Cavendish banana is in fact infertile. It has no seeds. The way it works is that its corms beget new ones, and then they're taken out and planted again. And again, and again, and again. Always the genetically identical tree.
[5:10]The writing, or the banana was on the wall. And here we are today, with ever worsening draws and severe weather making things warm for the fruit.
[5:19]Among others, two diseases are of major concern for the banana farmers. Panama disease and the black Sigatoka. Both fungi, one is incurable and can only be contained through literal quarantine.
[5:29]While the other can only be managed with heavy use of pesticides, a chemical Blitz Creek that harms or kills almost everything around it. So, what we need is to find or breed a more resistant banana type, or many of them.
[5:44]And it turns out that the world's largest banana collection is only a train ride away from where I live, at the laboratory of tropical crop improvement at the Loven University in Belgium. If anyone can tell me how this can be achieved, it will be them.
[5:59]So, let's go and find out. Drop it. Drop it. Drop it. Flash, so will not run today.
[6:07]We apologize for any inconvenience. All right, so it looks like going there is much harder than I thought. Austrian way race striking tomorrow and my train is the first to be canceled.
[6:20]Um, not going to Belgium tonight. I don't know when or if I will be going to the lab. I'll call the guys tomorrow. Let's see where it goes from there.
[6:30]Drop it. Drop it. Drop it. See, the banana is the hand breeder's nightmare. It's little to non-existent fertility, and the seedlessness makes it almost impossible to cross breed new varieties.
[6:40]And if one of its wild counterparts is resistant to a particular disease, it's still functionally useless if it's susceptible to another malady. And in the lab in Loven, they have more than 1,500 different types of bananas.
[6:50]So the traits and features that the banana needs to be fit for the future are to be found there. So, I want to find out how these traits can be brought together and make our banana strong.
[7:02]Thank you. So, I managed to find someone in Belgium who can go and film the lab. And in the meanwhile, I will call the lab leader, who can explain this to me much more in depth. Hey, how are you? What a my camera. Okay.
[7:16]The the Cavendish bananas are triploid, so it means that genetically it's a dead end. There's nothing you can do. So the only way you could do is to go back into the parental lines and to breed again.
[7:29]But of course, modern molecular tool molecular tools are quite attractive, because it means that you can still take advantage of the diversity. Uh, and now you don't need to think about a very complicated and very tedious and long-term perspective. Uh, breeding, uh, program to breed this gene back into the Cavendish.
[7:48]But you can think of using advanced molecular tools to bring directly the mutation in this, uh, crop species. My suspicion was right. There's only one way out. The standard term for all biotech food is GMO, which stands for genetically modified organism.
[8:02]The theory is simple, genes from one organism with specific traits like fast maturation, fertility, or resistance to a disease are added to the DNA of another. And the organisms can be vastly different, like the DNA of a bacterium can be added to a plant.
[8:17]The first gene transfers were successfully made in the 1970s and 80s, but methods back then were tedious and imprecise, until the Nobel Prize for chemistry. American molecular biologist Jennifer Doudna and her French colleague, Emmanuelle Charpentier discovered the CRISPR-Cas technology.
[8:35]Genetic scissors that can transfer genetic traits with unprecedented speed and incredible precision. For plant research and agriculture, the discovery of CRISPR-Cas is a boon.
[8:44]What took months or years through conventional breeding, can be obtained through genetic transformation in just days. We realized, okay, now we can take full advantage of the genetic diversity.
[8:50]And we are able with the CRISPR-Cas approach to mutate precisely in the genome, bring this mutation without any other changes in the genome. Tomato and strawberry varieties resistant to mildew have already been produced, and gluten-free wheat is just around the corner.
[9:12]And now it's the Cavendish banana's turn. James Dale, an Australian biotechnologist of Queensland University and his team have focused on altering Cavendish plants by inserting a gene from the wild banana, Musa acuminata malaccensis that confers resistance to Panama disease. With success, the newly developed variety appears to be immune.
[9:32]These bananas are resistant. But there's a catch, as always. A large number of consumers are skeptical about the idea of genetically manipulated food.
[9:40]According to survey conducted in the UK, 80% of shoppers wouldn't buy a banana like that. On a global scale, a median of 48% find GM food unsafe to eat, with only 13% considering it to be okay. People are scared. And then there's the EU.
[9:56]While GMOs are completely normal by now in the US, they're almost completely banned in Europe. But what's often overlooked is that conventional breeding is also a form of genetic manipulation.
[10:07]There's nothing natural about the infertile Cavendish banana. In fact, many of the problems that massive monocultural agriculture has incited can be tackled with gene technology.
[10:17]Loss of soil could be reduced through higher yields. Melody resistance could massively reduce pesticide use, and mitigate insect pests, increasing biodiversity and microbiome rich soils.
[10:30]And last but not least, hunger catastrophes provoked by climate-induced droughts could be fought with stronger crops. Yes, there is still this argument that the technology is so young, we still don't have enough experience, that we don't really know what we're doing.
[10:44]And once a crop is out there, you can't take it back. And of course, plants like these, as is also the case with conventionally bred varieties, need to be tested for harmlessness before use in agriculture.
[10:53]But with current developments, there's not much time left, and the seedless banana really doesn't pose the threat of spreading uncontrolled. I'm not saying this is the only response to all the challenge we are facing.
[11:04]That would be again a mistake to say so. Or at least we have to test the potential. We cannot go away from this without testing it, right? I mean, it's it makes no sense.
[11:14]The alternative is, of course, to just give it up. Do we even need an exotic treat such as the banana in our supermarket? I mean, in the end, it's a luxury that our great grandparents didn't even know existed, right?
[11:26]But this argument is deeply flawed. It's focused on a First World Euro-American bubble. As I mentioned before, millions of people in Central Africa rely on the banana.
[11:37]And in Asia and Latin America, it's a vital source of income. The consequences of letting the banana die is just unimaginable. So, let's try to overcome our fears and give the banana a chance to move ahead as a positive example for once.
[11:53]And who knows, maybe we'll get a stronger, more natural, and even tastier banana out of this. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.
