Yes, We Have No Bananas – Will Bananas Split?

Bananas represent the developing world’s fourth most important food crop, providing more than one-quarter of all food calories to residents in many parts of Africa. Farmers in 120 countries grow an estimated 95 million tonnes of bananas annually, with 85% of the global crop produced for home consumption and local trade. To provide the urgent action required at the world level necessary to protect this global resource, the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP) was created in 1985. Their primary effort today is to sequence the banana genome in preparation for genetic modification efforts. Following rice and the small laboratory test plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the banana will become only the third plant to have its DNA totally sequenced. Let’s all hope the INIBAP efforts succeed. In an almost trivial aside, if bananas go, so do all of those cool stickers, too.