Fungal disease threatens banana production in Africa
Currently, bananas are the most popular fruits worldwide, with the global banana trade skyrocketing in recent years. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 21 million metric tons of bananas were exported in 2019 alone.
However, the most traded variety at the moment – the Cavendish banana – is highly susceptible to a devastating fungal disease called the Fusarium wilt of banana (FWB), caused by the strain known as the Tropical Race 4 (TR4).
Times change, simple reporting isn't good enough. Media folk should be busy calling one of their batty scientist sources in the hope that the Fusarium wilt of banana could just possibly be transmitted to humans and worth a bigger headline.
Or maybe it could conceivably be caused by climate change, Trump, eating meat or the far right. For our thoroughly modern media it's all worth checking.
5 comments:
Whatever the cause of this wilt thingie, Brexit means we are going to be at the back of the queue for all those Latvian bananas.
Implicitly, I'll watch the BBC take this subject to its squeaking and clunking conclusion, with some sort of expose by a bloke called Vine, and some other idiot hangers-on...
Actually I won't as I have a decent book to get stuck into, and will not worry about such matters...
Sam - unless we can move global warming on a little - maybe dial it right up to King Charles speed.
Scrobs - a decent book is far better, or even doing the washing up.
Yes, once there is a shortage of bananas, it will be blamed firmly on brexit, with the accomanying pictures of empty shleves in supermarkets
Bucko - it will, the banana shortage articles almost write themselves.
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