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Comment by nmridul | Hacker News Reader

The bananas were one of the stuffs I always missed during overseas trips. The variety of bananas you get in Kerala is very rare in Europe, where in markets it's always the same type and mostly same brand.

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Yup, the Cavendish is what you find in non-banana-growing countries. Almost the only species of banana on the planet to get exported to other countries, as it is uniquely able to with stand the long journey. And, like most hardy, exportable fruit, it has one of the blandest flavors.

It's also very susceptible to a fungal blight, the Panama disease, which may eventually end up wiping out the entire variety, and make exported bananas a rarity.

> It's also very susceptible to a fungal blight, the Panama disease

Cavendish having good resistance to Panama disease is why it replaced Gros Michel, which was devastated by Panama disease. I think the current threat to Cavendish is black sigatoka, a different fungal blight.

EDIT: as pointed out down thread, there's a newer mutation of Panama disease threatening Cavendish. So the parallel to Gros Michel is closer than I remembered, and parent is correct.

There's a new variant of panama disease that can infect cavendish called TR4. Likely that is only fixable by genetically engineering resistant cavendish.

If we can do that, genetically engineering resistant Gros Michel would probably be a better choice, since Cavendish became popular just because the (otherwise preferred) Gros Michel was not an option.

I don't know about that. The Gros Michel supposedly has more of the chemical that's used for artificial banana flavor, and I've always hated that flavor.

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