Bananas are the UK’s most popular fruit.

On average we eat 10kg of bananas every year, about 100 bananas each. (BBC Good Food)

The health benefits of eating bananas are many.

7 Wonderful Benefits of Banana

11 Evidence-Based Health Benefits of Bananas

25 Powerful Reasons to Eat Bananas

But have you seen that the Cavendish Banana, the banana that most people in the world eat, is being wiped out by fungus?

ITV News covered the story on 20th December 2017.

Banana plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan have been destroyed by the fusarium fungus, which is spreading through much of Southeast Asia.

So far the fungus hasn’t reached the Caribbean where most of the UK’s Cavendish bananas originate but the clock is ticking.

The Cavendish banana has a fascinating history.

Chatsworth House in Derbyshire seems an unlikely birthplace for today’s global banana industry but that’s exactly what’s happened.

But now experts say the fungus could eventually wipe out Cavendish bananas worldwide.

This has happened before!

Up until the 1960s the Gros Michel banana was more popular than the Cavendish. Gros Michel was larger and considered tastier than the Cavendish. But the Gros Michel variety was killed off by a fungus.

To save the banana, scientists are trying to genetically alter the Cavendish to make it able to resist the fungus.

They are also developing another variety that they hope most consumers would find an acceptable substitute.

And it looks as though the scientists have solved the problem

as long as you don’t mind eating genetically modified crops.

Saving Cavendish: Team grows world-first Panama disease-resistant bananas.

So, hopefully, we won’t have to join Billy Jones in his 1923 rendition of “Yes! We Have No Bananas”.

Thanks for reading my blog today.