Depending on your definition of 'modern' agriculture.
I don't know when least there was a banana capable of self-seeding but I doubt it is within the last century or so. Was the Irish Potato Blight modern agriculture at work?
I was reading an article about seed varieties, and was staggered and sad to learn how many varieties have disappeared since the 1960s. It was something like 80%? A vast amount, anyway.
I though bananas were a monoculture because they're triploid, and therefore sterile. They're propagated asexually. That would imply that this isn't the fault of modern agriculture, it's a problem inherent to bananas.
On the other hand, it would now be incredibly easy to create new 'freak mutations', the same way we make seedless watermelons (assuming we can find a tasty enough parent species). It'd still take forever to re-establish the plantations, though.
As mesongles and uniqueid point out, it is actually only the bananas we currently eat that are in danger, there are still many other varieties of banana grown, they just aren't a food crop. Work has done/still does work on Banana and increasing the diversity to enable the continuance of the species but unfortunately the food crop has always been disturbingly vulnerable :(
Banana scarcity
anonymous
October 24 2008, 19:15:14 UTC
I remember how dire it was when that hurricane (Ike?) destroyed the banana crop in Australia two years back. Bananas went from $2/kg to £14/kg. My morning banana habit was put on hold. In fact, the first thing I did when I moved to the UK was to buy a banana.
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I don't know when least there was a banana capable of self-seeding but I doubt it is within the last century or so. Was the Irish Potato Blight modern agriculture at work?
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