Banana - The Fate Of The Fruit That Changed The World

NPR interview with Dan Koeppel author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. Fascinating, not many people here in USA know India is the world's largest producer and are oblivious to hundreds of varieties of Banana.

"KOEPPEL: The banana is the cheapest fruit in the supermarket, and that's pretty weird because it's shipped from great distances, and it requires a lot of handling and refrigeration, much more than apples, for example. To do that, the banana industry has for 100 years had a business model that focuses on a single product. That's the McDonald's comparison. And I like to tell people, imagine a pipe from Ecuador to your supermarket that can only fit one variety of the world's 1,000 banana varieties, and that's basically the way it works.

That's why bananas are so cheap. In order to bring new bananas, you have to build entirely new infrastructure, ranging from plantation to shipping to packing methods and to ways to tell consumers about it. 

FLATOW: How many of these varieties have you actually tasted and how different are they?

KOEPPEL: I've tasted about, I'd say, 100 different banana varieties all over the world.

FLATOW: Wow. You got a favorite?

KOEPPEL: Absolutely, My favorite is called Ibota Ibota. It's a variety found - I discovered it or tasted it first in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ibota Ibota - the word Ibota means fertile in Swahili. And this banana yields huge bunches, and so it's called fertile fertile. It's so fertile. And it is absolutely delicious. It has - you know, you can only describe it the way you describe a really interesting wine. It's got complex taste. It's got notes and colors to it. But, unfortunately, it doesn't have the properly characteristics for import and it's too bad because it's a revelation. Our Cavendish banana is a lousy banana. In India, the world's largest growing - banana-growing country, they call the Cavendish the hotel banana.

FLATOW: Could you genetically engineer a better banana so it's not susceptible to this fungus.

KOEPPEL: Yes. And there's been quite a bit of good work involved in that, mostly done in Australia through a Gates Foundation grant. And there has been some success but we don't know for sure how well these bananas will perform in the field in large scale.

In addition, Chiquita and Dole and the other banana companies have promised never to sell a GMO banana. And in Europe, for example, you can't even sell a product like that. So whether you're going to solve that problem through genetic modification, which I'm in favor of, you may never have a commercial variety that can actually hit store shelves"