The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has begun one of the largest privately-funded banana genetics research projects; the greenhouse breeding program is concentrating on subsistence bananas – the kind millions of people in the African highlands depend on as their primary source of nutrition – and using DNA engineering and traditional breeding techniques to increase levels of vitamin A and iron in those fruits.
Those are worthy goals, but I find it interesting that building disease resistance – the most important thing that needs to happen in the area surrounding Lake Victoria, where fungal wilts are rapidly destroying banana crops – seems to be a secondary goal, at least according to the article linked above. The project is being run by James Dale, a well-known banana biotech researcher who is quoted in my book.
Meanwhile, in Africa, some Gates foundation work is seen as controversial, precisely because it is technology-oriented. My feeling is that bananas – because they are quite difficult to breed, and because it is very late in the game in terms of improving their strength in the field – require as much technology as they can get. In this case, perhaps, this may be a version of Windows that is able to prevent viruses (sorry.)
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman 
