Hacker News Reader

So we can continue having bananas to eat. All bananas we eat are clones of a limited variety of banana species. A disease that affects one Cavendish banana tree will eventually wipe out all Cavendish bananas because they have identical genes.

Cloned plants are great for production for awhile but genetic diversity wins over time.

View on HN

I am assuming they will use the banana ancestor to breed it with their clone, and sell it at cost to the banana, pocketing the difference as profit.

then again, bananas will never pushback against footing the entire bill, so they'll probably get wiped out.

why do you think they're having some trouble finding banana ancestors? how much banana is there left?

That's now how bananas work. Bananas are sterile hybrids; that's why they're cloned in the first place. Other plants are cloned for other reasons, typically because they don't grow true from seed.

Luckily for us, banana plants grow like bromeliads. They flower and fruit then die. But not before sprouting several new stalks. So they're really easy to propagate by separating the new stalks once they get big enough.

Someone else posted this excellent article on it:

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com