Posts Tagged ‘ Banana Environment ’

More great banana art from Gonzalo Fuenmayor

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“Cuando las Miradas no Alcanzan,” 47×47″, oil on canvas, 2005


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“Unaited gui Stand,” 92 x 44 inches, oil on canvas, 2003*

Gonzalo is an artist from Colombia, site of some of the must brutal violence in the sad history of the Banana Republics. His grandfather worked for United Fruit (Chiquita), and tried – Gonzolo told me in an email – to paint a more sympathetic picture of the banana giant, which was responsible for the massacre of at least 1,000 banana workers during a strike in 1929 (the bloodshed was fictionalized by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in “100 Years of Solitude.”

The conflict between differing versions of the story – and Gonzalo’s own soul-searching about the relationship between the fruit, his own life, his culture, and his family give his work a high level of intensity (which is enhanced by the size of his canvases – some bigger than eight feet across.) I love these paintings. The feel both documentary and impressionistic, all at once.

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Will a weep-less onion lead to slip-less bananas?

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You’d cry, too.

Researchers in New Zealand and Japan have engineered what they describe as a “tear-free” onion, according to a report from the AFP wire service. The happy onion was developed by the Crop and Food Research institute. The lead scientist on the project, Colin Eady, described how it was done:

“We previously thought the tearing agent was produced spontaneously by cutting onions, but [a Japanese research team] proved it was controlled by an enzyme,” he told AFP from his home outside Christchurch. “Here in New Zealand we had the ability to insert DNA into onions, using gene-silencing technology developed by Australian scientists. The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it doesn’t produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn’t produce tears.”

(read the rest of the AFP article on Yahoo! news)

Genetic modification isn’t all that scary if you really think about it. And though nothing may be more valuable than the ability to make tears cease to flow, for bananas – aside from developing one that’s friendlier to pedestrians – the mission is more conventional: strengthen the fruit so that it will grow better, resist disease, and reduce the use of harmful chemicals that damage the environment and the health of plantation workers.

More on monkeys and bananas

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My friend Tim lived in Costa Rica for almost five years. He confirms not just that our simian relatives eat bananas, but also how they eat them:

“As I remember, they ate them upside down. Used their teeth to pull apart the peel. Bigger monkeys would bite chunks off or/and the smaller monkeys would break off chunks with both hands and sit and nibble or chomp away at the prized package in their hands. Actually it would be cool to get a small video of this on your site. Err…dont mean to tell you what ot do, I just remember it being real cute to watch.”

Your wish is my command, amigo:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGhi2ZXEALQ&rel=1]

Tim, by the way, owns a really cool bike shop in Platteville, Wisconsin.

This book (might one day) be printed on banana paper

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Note: This entry originally appeared on the Penguin authors’ blog, which I contributed to this week.


If you’ve bought my book, then you know that the subject – saving the banana from a disease that currently threatens it – has, as its background, the notion of monoculture: relying on a single crop, rather than diverse ones, leaving that crop open to all-in-one-blow disasters.

One way to expand bananas beyond the modern monoculture would be to recognize that the fruit is usable for other products. One of the most intriguing of these is paper. The banana “tree” isn’t a tree at all – it is a giant herb. That means a lot of things (for example, a banana plant has no bark), but for the sake of making paper, the big advantage is this: a banana plant grows like crazy. A productive plantation can see tiny stems reach as high as twenty feet in a single year. Each “tree” produces one bunch – about 150 individual bananas – of fruit per year; it then gives “birth” to another tree. The process can continue virtually forever. The big question has been what to do with those giant trees, which quickly fall over one they’ve fruited, and usually are discarded after they’ve been.

More after the jump; or watch this informative (but very dry) video about the banana paper manufacturing process.

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First Pictures – Transgenic bananas in Ugandan field trial

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For reasons I go over in the book, I’ve come to believe – and I never thought I’d feel this way when I started my research – that transgenic, or GM (genetically modified) bananas are the most likely answer to the diseases that now threaten the crop’s future. Transgenics are especially key in Africa, where bananas are the primary supplier of calories for millions of people. The loss of local banana crops in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi would be catastrophic.

For years, banana scientists have been fighting to get permission to launch limited trials of the transgenic fruit. Last year, a team led by Rony Swennen, head of the Division of Crop Biotechnics and the Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement at Belgium’s Catholic University of Leuven (whew! link ) was finally allowed to begin trials of lab-bred bananas at Kawanda, Uganda. The pictures below, taken January 15 – the plants are about eight months old – are the first to be released of the future fruit. About another five years of testing will be needed to see if these plants resist the diseases – especially an airborne blight called “Black Sigatoka” – that are currently causing drastic losses in banana productivity throughout the African highlands.

Two Fabulous Banana Products

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There are a dozen major diseases that affect the banana – most virulent, many incurable (the rest often require enough pesticides to turn you into a lobster.) But how to you recognize these maladies? The American Phytopathological Society (APS) has the answer: a CD-ROM called “Diseases of Tropical Fruits, Citrus, and Sugarcane.”

That’s right – you’ll not only get pictures of the stuff that ails bananas, but you’ll also feast your eyes on over 550 photographs of angry fungi, bacteria, viruses, worms, and beetles, on the march against avocado, banana, coconut, grapefruit, lemon, lime, mandarine, mango, orange, papaya, and sugarcane. A bargain at $59.00.

If – for some insane reason – an electronic photo album of plant sicknesses isn’t up your alley, the “Banana Bunker” from Cultured Containers might be nice: this is a curved, protective plastic container for your fruit. I’ve already reviewed one of these – the “Banana Guard” – and though I normally attempt to refrain from commentary that might discomfort, to quote Bob Chipeska, those with “tender sensibility,” this has to be said: the thing looks like it belongs hidden under your bed (though I like the accordion center, which presumably stretches to fit any size fruit.) The inventor, Paul Stremple, points out that the product not only keeps your banana safe and unblemished, but also safeguards the contents of your backpack or briefcase from the banana. Price: $4.99.

If only Stremple’s masterpiece could extend its protective shield to the sick bananas on the CD-ROM.

Order the CD-ROM. Order the banana protector, or, if you happen to be in New England, buy one – no foolin’ – at the gift shop of the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

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THE BANANA BLOG is about the world's most endangered - and dangerous - fruit. THE BIG PARADE is about stairways, route and transit geekery, and pedestrian pursuits in Los Angeles. You can also read all the topics at once, which might also include productivity, geekery, DIY whatever, mountain biking, stuff that I think is funny that nobody else likely will, and other boring, useless crap.

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