Take back the Bananas, Motherfucker.

Bananas’ days may be numbered

Expert says
seedless fruit
needs a boost
from biotech.

Reuters
LONDON, Jan. 17 — It is one of the world’s favorite fruits, but the banana hasn’t had sex in years and its days may be are numbered. Without scientific help, the sterile, seedless fruit could disappear with 10 years, according to a Belgian plant pathologist.
EMILE FRISON, the head of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain in Montpellier, France, said the fruit lacks the genetic diversity to fight off diseases and pests that are plaguing banana plantations, and only biotechnology and genetic manipulation may be able to save it.
“Frison sees it as the only hope for the banana,” the magazine New Scientist said in this week’s issue.
Without assistance banana production could drop and mark the beginning of the end of the fruit.
“We may even see the extinction of the banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and as the most popular product on the world’s supermarket shelves,” the magazine added.
Since modern-day bananas do not possess viable seeds, the plants must be propagated vegetatively by planting stems or sucker sprouts. The black seedlike specks sometimes seen within the fruit are actually aborted ovules that do not mature into seeds.