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Health Department
Can NanoTech Save the Banana?!
February 23, 2008
Despite clarifications by urban legend buster, Snopes.com the banana, at least the Cavendish, is indeed on its way off the planet due to two aggressive fungi, which will bring its history to a close, much as the fated Gros Michel in the 1920s.
Bananas are in the news again with the publication of Popular Science writer Dan Koeppel's book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World featured last week on NPR. The book traces not only the epidemiology of the plagued fruit but the sordid corporate history of the Banana Republics, the promotion of which gave NPR one more opportunity to despoil the reputation of the CIA and the United States.
Politics aside, the future of the banana is something grocers and those who invest in banana futures and commodities should be keeping an eye on.
According to a research paper from Bryn Mawr College posted on Serindip, the average American eats 26.2 pounds of Cavendish bananas every year and 100 billion total Cavendish bananas are consumed every year.
The first of these fungi, the Black Sigatoka disease, caused by Mycosphaerella fijiensis, is somewhat treatable and contained with pesticides. It originated in Papua, New Guinea and has spread to Australia and some South East Asian countries. It is an exterior disease that produces deteriorating spots.
The more difficult fungus is a newer strane of Panama disease known as Race 4 Fusarium Wilt. It is soil born and attacks the roots of the tree. The good news is that in order to spread the soil itself must be physically moved. In this way fields are destroyed. So long as protocol is followed the spread should be containable. This protects the South American and Caribbean countries from which most of the Cavendish crops originate to this day. However, it only takes a handful of bad soil to destroy an entire field.
Add to this the vulnerabiity of the banana itself. The problem with bananas is that there is very little genetic variety. They do not reproduce by mixing genes. They simply clone themselves. As a result, all efforts so far to find Race 4 Resistant bananas to replace the Cavendish as the banana of choice for those who love to eat it raw have failed.
In agriculture, it is typical to fight one fungus with another. So much experimentation has taken place with such traditional methods to combat the disease, still with failure. Composting itself enriches soil and requires bacteria and microbes and fungi to break down plants turning them into useful soil high in minerals and nutrients.
Nanotechnology 
has recently entered the field of agriculture posing some possible solutions.
According to Soy Research News a research group in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) and the College of Engineering (COE) at the University of Illinois are incollaboration to see whether the latest applications in nanotechnology will provide solutions for some of the most pressing problems facing Illinois agriculture, including disease management.
Funding for the Center is provided by a special grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The activities are supported by the Soybean Disease Biotechnology Center at the National Soybean Research Laboratory (NSRL), the College of ACES, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research.
An Andalusian group has already developed a nano-compound that can treat fungus on strawberries, as well.
The
Andalusian research group has developed a novel family of compounds which is able to reduce or prevent the growing of several kinds of harmful fungi which affect crops such as grapes and strawberries.
Botrytis cinerea affects grapes and strawberries, vegetables like beans, carrots and cucumbers and ornamental plants (roses, tulips, etc…). Colletotrichu is considered one of the most harmful plagues in agriculture, owing to the broad range of plants that it can affect. And the newly invented nano-compounds are able to attack the Phytopthora infestants, as well, which usually infects potato and tomato crops.
Be that as it may, so far nanotechnology is unable to solve the problem of Race 4. State of the art nano is now able to provide coated antimicrobial surfacing which fights fungi on a "mechanical" level. This would apply to an outside surface such as a banana peel. But introducing it into the soil creates an access interference on the one hand, and a disturbance to ecobalance on the other.
Nanotech is the perfect solution for grocers who want disease free floors, shelves, meat trays and equipment such as shopping carts. Consider Uniglobe's Bioshield®75, for instance. Nano-based products can even be used to keep away odors from garbage and floor mats. CleenFreek® is a great example.
Now out of the concept stage and fully deployable, Uniglobe is anxious to bring Bioshield®75 not only to supermarkets, but to restaurants, locker rooms, the entertainment industry, hospitals, waste management, cruise lines and the navy and other government facilities such as jails, where surfaces have spawned such infectious diseases as MRSA and much more.
One application keeps killing microbes mechanically for months through the tiny sword-like microstructures for months, in such a fashion that stronger more verulent forms of disease do not arise. All grocers need do is make a phone call and Bioshield will schedule applications.
But so far nontechnology is only good for surfaces, not soil. The race is still on for a solution to Race 4 and the salvation of our beloved banana.
By Jeff Overbeck, Freelance Reporter