Devastating fungus ravages common banana crops

WASHINGTON -- A fungus scientists have dubbed "the HIV of banana plantations" has ravaged huge crops of the cavendish variety -- the only kind of banana available in American grocery stores.
The spread of the soil-borne fungus Tropical Race IV has ruined crops across China, the Philippines and Australia, and is expected to spread next to Central America, where American distributors get the fruit.

Two teams of scientists are trying to genetically engineer cavendish bananas that are resistant to the fungus.

There are thousands of kinds of bananas worldwide, but the Cavendish, discovered in a Chinese household garden by a nineteenth-century British Explorer, represents 99 percent of the international market, according to a New Yorker report.

Most other exported varieties won't withstand the international trip or ripen too quickly.

The New Yorker reports in 2008 Americans ate 7.6 billion pounds of Cavendish bananas, which at 60 cents a pound are also very cheap.

http://www.wtopnews.com/?sid=2228704&nid=25

of all the hardest things to prep..can't dehydrate them can't can them like you would tomatoes....

I,m not a big banana eater but I use them in canned banana bread..best I get more done up