BANANA DRAMA

Our fave fruit faces wipeout

SUPPLIES of bananas are under threat as a tropical virus threatens to wipe out the yellow curvy favourite.

Scientists fear if they can’t find a cure, banana plants across the globe face extinction.

BANANAS are feared to be at risk of extinction thanks to a devastating disease sweeping across the world.

The fungal infection has already ravaged plantations in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia and Central America.

Only South America is currently free of the bug, Panama disease, which eats away at the roots of the plants.

So far chemical treatments have failed to ward off the fungus. Experts have only been able to halt it by putting large areas under quarantine.

Cavendish bananas, the most widely grown strain worldwide, were thought to be immune to the bug. But in 2008 came the first reports of Cavendish crops under attack in Malaysia – and the disease had been spreading around the tropics ever since.

Dutch expert Dr Gert Kema said: “Cavendish is now collapsing and there is nothing to replace it.”

However, scientists are pinning their hopes on creating a new hybrid from a rare wild banana species from Madagascar which is believed to be immune.

Cavendish bananas are named after William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, who first created the strain in the hothouse at Chatsworth, Derbys, in the 1830s before exporting them back to the tropics.

Around five billion Cavendish bananas are eaten each year in the UK.