In late January, when the Venezuelan government announced that it had detected the banana-killing fungus known as Fusarium wilt on farms in some areas, it was the latest outbreak of a disease that has been slowly spreading around the world. Last year, Peru declared a state of emergency when it detected the same disease. In Colombia, where the fungus was discovered in 2019, hundreds of acres of banana trees were destroyed in an attempt to stop it from spreading.
First discovered in Taiwan in the 1990s, the fungus spread through Asia to the Middle East and Africa before ending up in Central and South America. Once it’s in the soil, it stays there, so the land can no longer be used to grow bananas.
On a Dole banana plantation in Central America, a new field trial will soon test Cavendish bananas that have been gene edited in an attempt to help them survive the fungus. Elo Life Systems, the biotech company that developed the bananas, used data analytics to quickly sort through the genomes of other varieties (and other plants) that are naturally resistant to the disease.
“We go out and survey nature and try to find solutions that are out there,” says Todd Rands, CEO of Elo Life Systems. “We find interesting kinds of proteins or oil molecules, like essential oils that are naturally occurring in a lot of plants. And those same elements exist in bananas. All we need to do is figure out how to get them to turn on in the right tissues where that disease is coming in.”
Source: fastcompany.com
Photo source: Elo Life Systems