It's a shame because bananas are very cheap. On the one hand they're cheap enough to double in cost and many can handle it. On the other hand, they're a cheap staple for low income folks.
It was the same for Gros Michel.
Edit: what more, GMO are not inherently bad.
Monsanto gave them a bad name, because of their commercial practice (terminator gene), and the catastrophic environmental consequences of glyphosate-resistant crops.
They can be used wisely. For example, did you know that the insulin diabetics use is produced by GM yeast?
I believe traditionally bananas are grown as the main trunk, then 2 baby shoots at differing maturity. Once the main stem has fruited, it is removed and the next one takes over, at which point another shoot is allowed to develop.
The extra shoots that are removed can be used to start another "family" elsewhere, but has the risk of spreading disease. These days tissue culturing is used, with a much lower risk of spreading disease.
Why they are cheap is interesting: http://freakonomics.com/2008/06/19/the-economics-of-bananas/
I am much less accomodating for inserting genes from a completely different kingdom, like the Bt gene and associated promoters. Also, since the triploid bananas are sterile, there is a smaller likelihood that the alterations will escape into the wild and ruin fertile diploid bananas.
The way "natural" is commonly defined is misleading. Humans are apes, mammals, animals. We're part of nature, and so is everything we create and produce.
Artificial is a subset of natural.
I find the common definition misleading, because it implies that humanity is not part of nature. It is technically false, and causes confusion in the mind of most people.
The "natural good, artificial bad" meme needs to die.
We're currently facing ecological problems of immense scale, and not having a proper basic mental model of the situation is detrimental.
In particular, the sense of “natural” having to do with something’s unaltered/innate condition – as compared to some result of human interference – dates back at least to Plato [well, there the word was the Greek phusis, whereas natura is the Latin word used to translate it, but you get the idea]. Or if you want examples in English, at least to Chaucer.
Note, if you want a much fuller idea of what “nature”/“natural” means and meant in the past, I highly recommend the CS Lewis book Studies in Words which devotes a 50 page chapter to comprehensively exploring the subject.
> ... the generally positive connotation of “nature”.
"Nature" is inherently hostile (see Thermodynamics, 2nd law). What's currently marketed as "natural" is a carefully vetted subset, the result of thousands of years of humanity influence on its environment.
As you mention, the definition of the word has been evolving. I think the current meaning is misleading. It causes people to reject man-made things arbitrarily, and, more generally, it perpetuates an anthropocentric view of the world.
Wishing it had (and advocating for) a saner definition is not silly.
Why do you think it is "tilting at windmills" for me to want the definition to change to something that pleases me?
To my knowledge, some varieties of plantain are already resistant. So identify that gene complex, pop it into the infertile triploid Gros Michel, and let the cloning commence.