Bananas

This was in response to an attack on our current agricultural habits. It was noted that the banana was bread to be sterile, and therefore could not fend of diseases. It was written on July 30, 1003:

I wonder about this. It is true that the banana on the shelf it sterile, or at least I have been told that, but when I went to the store last time I noticed there were three different varieties of bananas sold. That included the usual yellow banana, the plantain (another variety of banana), and a short variety I had not seen before.

This is argument is dangerous to those people who want to limit genetic engineering because someone will say we have the technology, or will have the technology, to fix the problems presented. If the problems cited exists, then genetic engineering is the only solution.

A similar statement has been made about corn. That is, corn does not grow in the wild anyplace. Therefore, farmer get to depending on a few hybrid varieties. I a disease attacks one of these hybrids, all the corn crop could be vulnerable. This was an issue when I read about when I was in Iowa, where corn is the major crop.

I have not seen anyone speaking against the type of genetic engineering that produced the banana. The people that did this had no way of producing new genes, only manipulating genes that already existed. Therefore comparing this to the current controversy over genetic engineering is wrong.

It can be pointed out that the Red Delicious apple, despite its seeds, is reproducible only by grafting from existing trees. If there were a disease that attacked that variety of apple, it could be off the shelves very fast. Of course, there are enough wild apples so that apples would not disappear, but that variety, or any other, could disappear.

Perhaps we need to look at our eating habits. But then, the Panda, and some other species of animal, exist by eating only one variety of plants. The plant goes extinct, so does the animal. At least, people would continue to exist even if the banana does not.