If you want to see an evolutionary bushed end , look no further than the supermarket bring forth aisle . Every banana you eat is an infertile dead ringer , and its raging antecedent were n’t much adept when it came to bump new genes .
This is n’t sound word for the banana or one of their elemental consumer ( that ’d be us ) . Because bananas are quite literally all exactly the same , any disease that hits one banana is fairly much certain to wreak mayhem on an entire universe . And since the vast absolute majority of banana are grown for local consumption , any commotion could create a shortage in the palisade area . In fact , the current most popular banana variety , the Cavendish , could become unsuitable for cultivation in the next 10 to 20 years . But a new study tracing the tat history of humankind and banana might offer some assist .
That ’s the hope of researchers at the Australian National University , who used a mix of genetical , linguistic , and archeological information to visualise out not just how bananas spread across the world , but also what role humans played in that process . Research drawing card Mark Donohue explains :
“ The genetical descent is one matter , but bang whether they are being used by humans is another . The archaeologists could secernate us when they were actually being used , the geneticist could say us which focussing and which kind of cross - breeding happened and , through the linguistics , we handle to get an idea of how culturally significant bananas were for the regions they were in . ”
We know that banana originated in Southeast Asia , and the archeological grounds points to their first tameness taking space in what ’s now Papua New Guinea about 7,000 years ago . Genetic analysis can then foot the story up and tell us that banana then began cross on the environ islands and landmasses in ways that must have demand human cultivation . The researchers also regain over 1,100 terms for banana tree in various oral communication , and they ’ve been able to trace four key dissemination pattern based on the unlike words .
This enquiry break us some insight into how banana became so inbred and , perhaps , how we can work to overrule that trend . Donohue argues that any solution will require the creation of local diverseness for bananas so that one banana can no longer take down an entire population . That said , the real Bob Hope for the researchers – and banana grower – is to find the one banana tree eccentric out of the century of still unexplored risky varieties that can be resistant to disease .
Donohue explains :
“ Many parts of the universe , like Indonesia , do n’t really know the sort of genetic diverseness that ’s out there – there ’s never been a sight . grant the dissimilar kinds of clime we see , from New Guinea to South East Asia , there ’s probably a specialized variety , already being grown or present in the natural state , that can hit that [ disease springy ] recess quite well if we could only find it . ”
ViaDiscovery News .
Image by watcharakun / Shutterstock
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture intelligence in your inbox day by day .
news program from the future , hand over to your present tense .
You May Also Like
