Cavendish Banana
Australia - The Cavendish Banana, 57, Australia, died October 12, 2011. The last commercially viable Cavendish plantation succumbed to Panama disease race 4, surrounded by its offspring, after a valiant many-years and global struggle with the disease. Services will not be held worldwide at 10:30 AM GMT October 15 with representatives from United Fruit and Standard Fruit (Chiquita and Dole respectively) presiding.
The Cavendish was born in the early 1950s after the Cavendish’s predecessor, the Gros Michel, succumbed to Panama disease race 1. It was chosen as the successor to Gros Michel due to good performance in transportability, shelf life, ability to grow in Gros Michel’s old plantations, and a variety of other factors. Guided by the strong hands of Chiquita and Dole, the Cavendish ascended to global acceptance and the throne passed easily to this young, supposedly disease-proof strain.
Originally hailing from South-East Asia in regions of China and Vietnam, the Cavendish has been successfully raised in tropical locales all around the world. Bananas remain a popular choice for subsistence farmers due to the lack of need for replanting coupled with consistent fruit yields through many seasons.
The Cavendish was preceded in commercial death by the Gros Michel, and is survived by a number of new hybrid and more-resistant cultivars, such as the Goldfinger.
I was reading about bananas, in the assorted links below and I thought it might be interesting if there were an obituary for the Cavendish, which is evidently in some danger of not being so cheaply available the world over. Of course, an obituary for the world’s favorite fruit would probably need to be taken on by a better writer than myself, as this would be entirely too little to do it justice. I’d nominate Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World.
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