Review by Annabel
I’m becoming addicted to the Melville House ‘Futures’ series – see my reviews of (Fraud, Gardens, Energy and Trust). The series comprises short non-fiction, extended essays to make the reader think, in which experts chronicle the development of their subject and speculate where it is going in the near future. The latest addition to the series is a fascinating look at the subject of… bananas!
The humble banana, the world’s favourite fruit, is a topic particularly worthy of discussion because the bananas we prefer to eat as fruit (rather than cooking varieties like plantains) are almost all just one variety – the ‘Cavendish’, so named after the Duke of Devonshire’s family by Joseph Paxton (he of the Crystal Palace), who built the Chatsworth greenhouses in which some were cultivated after being brought back from Mauritius.
The Cavendish banana is renowned for its taste, colour and texture, being essentially seedless. It is this latter feature that has led to the variety’s low biodiversity; it must be propagated via runners or suckers from the parent plant. This makes each plant identical and thus vulnerable to disease.
Professor James Dale is one of the world’s leading scientists on bananas, based in Queensland. The opening sections of the book take us through the history of the banana, from wild ones to the Cavendish, explaining the genetic differences as we go. He also discusses the economics of the banana, as the fruits begin to ripen quickly once harvested. It was the arrival of the steamship that opened up their shipping, enabling unripe fruit to be transported far and wide. Of course, this led to the dominance of banana exporting by just a few companies.
Returning to discuss the various diseases that affect bananas at length, Dale tells us how the rival to the Cavendish banana, Gros Michel, was wiped out by the 1950s due to a soil-borne fungus causing what was named Panama disease. Given that the plant was also propagated by suckers, it is easy to see how it was imported from plantation to plantation. A different strain can affect the Cavendish too. Then there is Black Sigatoka. First identified in 1963, it is a leaf disease, again caused by a fungus. It kills the leaves, reduces photosynthesis, which leads to lower yields, and is not specific to one variety of banana. It can be controlled by massive spraying programmes – but the environmental and health impacts of that are huge.
This all leads to a discussion on banana breeding, (there was one early programme where they sieved 1000 bunches of fruit to find a single Cavendish seed). With all the advances in genetics, programmes have moved on. Dales’ current work is on GM bananas, trying to produce a cultivar resistant to Panama disease in particular. Dale explains the different types of GM clearly, whether you cut a gene out, switch it off, or replace it with one from another plant, for instance, and the amazing techniques for doing this, like CRISPR. This is a more technical section of the book, but still fascinating, and the race is on between the big banana companies to produce new hybrid varieties with disease resistance. Dales’ university lab has produced one already, but the real challenge, and it is a big one, is to get governments to accept GM fruit!
Where next? He discusses cisgenics, which moves genes within a plant species – from cultivar to cultivar – as can occur in conventional plant breeding. Combined with gene editing, ‘there is a clear path to the development of the next supermarket bananas’ once regulations can be sorted. Then there is the effect of climate change…
I found it amusing that Dale, in his acknowledgements, felt it necessary to apologise for his writing style, as he was more used to the particular dryness and technical emphasis of scientific papers. However, his finished product was far from dry, it was informative, clear and often entertaining. The Future of Bananas is another fine addition to this series.
Annabel is a co-founder and editor of Shiny.
James Dale, The Future of Bananas (Melville House, 2026) ISBN 978-1911545811, flapped paperback original, 144pp incl. index and references.
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