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Comment by megablast | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: if you have ever have those small banana lollies, they taste quite different to bananas now. That is because they were created during the time of the Gros Michel, the old type of banana.

And all bananas are cloned from the same variety, one reason this virus is such a concern.

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> And all bananas are cloned from the same variety, one reason this virus is such a concern.

Did you read the article? One of the MAIN POINTS of this article was that this oft-repeated 'fact' is untrue. That, in fact, only a small portion of bananas are Cavendish grown for export, and that the non-cavendish (not cloned) bananas are also vulnerable to this fungus (not virus).

Actually, the article explains that 60% of Cavendish fruits are eaten locally - farmers grow the strain due to its high availability and very high yields. It's not "all bananas", but the Cavendish does have a vast majority, both locally and in export.

There are plenty of resistant banana varieties out there. They gained their resistance by reproducing normally and adapting to the new fungi. However, that very fact makes it less palatable for the western market, because fertile bananas have hard seeds in them that make them harder to eat.

What the big banana growers are looking for is another sterile banana variety that they can plant from cuttings that will never evolve, but will somehow be resistant to all the new fungi that nature is likely to throw at it in the future. Not that likely to happen.

But if the fungus has already ravaged plantations in Malaysia, why are there still so incredibly many different varieties of banana available there?

I was in Indonesia recently, and the markets there had tons of different banana varieties. And they all had a lot more taste than the Cavendish. Export those to us!

I wonder why the artificial banana flavor hasn't ever been updated. Cavendish bananas have apparently been dominant for over half a century.

Source for that? I always wondered why artificial banana flavour was so far off from that of the real fruit.

The reason why artificial flavors in general are different, is that a plant's flavor is made of a lot of different chemicals, and artificial flavorings only include the most noticeable (and least expensive) ones - so all the subtleties get left out.

No idea if the change of banana varieties also affects it, or not.

I don't know any source but I have seen that comment mentioned in every banana related blog post I ever read.

Anecdotal evidence: A friend that traveled to Panama tasted the Gross Michel and said that the flavor is closer.

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