The Miracle of the Modern Banana

Re:The Miracle of the Modern Banana by tehwebguy on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @08:12PM (#12265564)

> When people talk about fruit at cocktail parties, my only quibble is something semantic: how people use the word “the"—as in, when the strawberry arrived in North America, or how the avocado is paralyzing Central American farmers.

Dude goes to some pretty stuffy parties.

For real though this is interesting. Seems logical that as a food we grow consolidates it becomes easier for one biological agent to wipe it out.

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Re:The Miracle of the Modern Banana by mark_edward on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @10:24PM (#12265986)

Could be hint to not consolidate our food so excessively, if possible. Irish potato famine was probably an earlier hint.

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Re:The Miracle of the Modern Banana by rwallace on Thursday August 11, 2016 @07:47AM (#12267411)

And in the meantime, make damn sure we keep samples of every existing genotype of crop species, including the varieties that aren't in themselves commercially useful because of low yields or whatever. We don't know in advance which variety might have the gene the species needs to survive some disease.

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Re:The Miracle of the Modern Banana by JoeAltmaier on Thursday August 11, 2016 @07:49AM (#12267419)

...or just make what we need later? I think the random-cross-slow-road of gene selection is going to be passé pretty soon.

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Re:The Miracle of the Modern Banana by rwallace on Thursday August 11, 2016 @10:29PM (#12273078)

I think that's a great goal to aim for, but remember we were supposed to have full-blown Drexler-style molecular manufacturing years ago and like most things in this universe it has turned out to be harder than we expected, so let's try to avoid letting the set of (literal) deadlines we face get any bigger than it needs to be.

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