Emily Chan
The most popular fruit in the United States is bananas. In 2021, Americans consumed an average of 26.87 pounds of bananas per person.
The bananas we snack on today are of the Cavendish variety, and they are being threatened by a disease that might end our banana-eating days for good.
It sure doesn’t seem like bananas are in danger since grocery store shelves tend to be fully stocked with the bright yellow fruit. To understand how and why bananas could be a rarity, you need to know their history.
Before the Cavendish, there was the original banana, which was called the Gros Michel. It was eaten prior to the 1950s, but by the 1960s, it was extinct, and the Cavendish became the norm. So, how did this change occur?
Gros Michel came from Southeast Asia and was brought to the Caribbean island of Martinique by French naturalist Nicolas Boudin.
Then, it was taken to Jamaica by Jean Francois Pouyat, a French botanist. From the Caribbean, bananas were being shipped to the U.S. as early as the 1830s. In the early 20th century, banana plantations were exporting the fruit to places all over the world.
In the late 1800s, Panama disease showed up, spreading far and wide. The fungus causes the banana plant to wilt.
It was named for the place where it first destroyed large quantities of bananas. The fungus spread north from Panama, killing off plants in Honduras, Suriname, and Costa Rica.
Overall, Panama disease, Race 1, the first variant of the fungus, caused the loss of thousands of acres of banana plantations.
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