Fruit flavor is a very interesting invention, on the one hand, it can make people who can't eat fresh fruit taste exotic flavors, on the other hand, it often bombards our taste buds with poor taste.
Blueberry flavor, guava flavor, cherry flavor, watermelon flavor, etc. are often criticized, and banana flavor is also a member of the "inferior army".
But to be reasonable, banana flavor really can't blame the chemist, you can only blame the banana itself.
Bananas are arguably one of the most common fruits.
In 2017, 926,000 tons of bananas were sold to China from all over the world, accounting for 1/4 of China's total fruit imports, which is a well-deserved large importer.
But as early as the 19th century, the prevailing banana was not the current Banana variety, but a banana variety called Rice Seven.
Rice seven bananas not only have a stronger banana flavor and better taste, but also are more convenient to transport and store than today's bananas.
The period when rice seven bananas flourished coincided with the birth of the "artificial banana flavor".
Nowadays, we feel that banana-flavored candy is not like banana flavor, but it is actually not like the taste of banana.
Rice seven bananas are far more delicious than Chinese bananas, so why are they not common nowadays?
The root cause is that it is because of the special mode of production, and the common sense mistake in agricultural planting has been made - monoculture.
Monoculture led to devastating fungal diseases, and eventually the rice seven bananas completely withdrew from the fruit stage.
The last batch of rice, Seven Bananas, arrived in the United States in 1965, fulfilling its historic mission.
Today, rice seven is extinct in the Americas and Africa, and only Thailand is still cultivated in small quantities.
This inadvertently preserved "seven flavors of rice" can also be regarded as a remembrance of the former banana overlord.
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Wild bananas have a very long history, but their existence has never attracted the attention of the ancestors.
Because the fruit of wild bananas contains a large number of seeds, these bananas, regardless of their taste, can be daunting just by the feeling of teeth.
It was not until the small fruit wild banana that grew in Southeast Asia was crossed with the wild banana native to India that a delicious love crystal was produced.
People who taste the delicious food have since found the right way to open bananas.
Fertile wild bananas have a large number of seeds
The existing edible bananas are artificially selected and bred "special students", with unique flavors and no seeds to eat without effort.
But there is no seed because it is triploid, and we know from our high school biological knowledge that triploid cannot be meiosis normally.
Bananas that have lost their fertility can only rely on human strength if they want to continue their offspring.
Asexual propagation of bananas is generally to divide the cuttings from the optimal mother plant and bury them in the soil to grow plants.
Or use the plants that have not yet flowered as materials, cut into pieces to cultivate, and plant in batches, which not only has a high survival rate, but also has neat results, which is suitable for a large number of seedlings.
But either way, it's the equivalent of cloning the mother plant, and each banana will have the same set of genes.
Each one looks like the other bananas, and is surprisingly consistent in size, taste, and texture.
The delicacy of bananas reached its peak in the early 19th century.
During his travels in Southeast Asia, the French naturalist Nicolas Baudin found a unique flavored banana, the Rice Seven Bananas, which he took to the Botanical Gardens in the Caribbean region to grow.
Then, in 1870, Captain Baker, the founder of the United Fruit Company*, sold rice seven bananas to the United States for the first time, which was loved by the American people and became the most popular banana at that time.
*Note: Now Kingjida Brand International, inc., is a manufacturer and sharer of bananas and other agricultural products in the United States, and was once the largest banana distributor in the United States.
The picture shows the Golden Jeddah bananas that are currently on sale
The success of rice seven bananas brought huge profits, and Baker built a huge banana empire.
Guatemala is the main producer of bananas today and was the main base for the cultivation of the combined fruit at that time.
The company paid the government a certain amount of money in exchange for land to grow bananas, and in order to make bananas easily transported, they even built the country's first railway.
At the time, a year's worth of banana sales alone could match Guatemala's two-year GDP*.
*Note: In 1904, the American writer O. Henry's novel Cabbage and the King used the term "banana republic" to satirize these countries whose economic lifeline was grasped by the banana industry in other countries.
Amazing profits and strong market forces have made most banana farmers in the world choose to grow rice and seven bananas.
In fact, as far as eating bananas is concerned, there are not no other options, such as cavendish found in China, which has become a new market choice half a century later.
But at that time, Hua Banana was not worthy of giving rice seven bananas to carry shoes.
Today,the plantain has become dominant
Seven bananas of rice are too good, and Dane Kebo, author of The Banana Code – The Fruit that Changed the World, argues:
"If the taste of Rice Seven is Haagen-Dazs- level, then the taste of Hua Banana is just cheap ice cream in the supermarket."
Moreover, the rice seven bananas are more resistant to storage and taste better, compared to the useless Chinese bananas have to take a back seat and become an ornamental plant in the eyes of the nobility.
Rice seven bananas, the appearance of the difference is not much
Over-favoritization has also become the root cause of the extinction of the rice seven bananas.
At that time, the development of the banana industry was almost deformed, and bananas around the world had the same set of genes, the same look, and the same taste.
From an economic point of view, growing a single banana clone is definitely a smart choice, but the problem is obviously easy to see, and even the largest crop clusters can't help but be devastated by disease.
There have been numerous cases in history of disease effects caused by monoculture.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the British colony of Ceylon was the main coffee growing area in Britain, and the huge demand made the place densely planted with the same kind of coffee trees, coffee brought wealth, and banks, roads, and hotels were constantly added.
But a coffee tree rust swept across Ceylon, and the same genes made coffee trees equally vulnerable.
The fall of one tree means the death of all coffee trees, and it also means the collapse of the huge coffee empire.
Coffee tree rust
The Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century also demonstrated how fragile the crop boom was.
The Irish, who had relied on the potato as a crop, had grown 17-fold to feed the country's 8 million people.
But the same mistake led to a similar scourge, with Potatoes in Ireland being hit by potato late blight.
This time the consequences were even more dire, with an unprecedented famine sweeping across Ireland, with 1/4 of the Irish dying of hunger.
This is precisely the crisis facing the banana industry.
Mankind makes the mistake of monoculture again and again, and disasters always come sooner than they wake up.
Panama disease* struck, and the fungus infected banana trees, making it impossible to transport water and nutrients, and eventually withered and died.
Worst of all, the fungus can survive in the soil for decades, and infected botanical gardens will no longer be able to grow bananas, which can be called "banana cancer".
*Note: There is a famous banana blight No. 1, the pathogenic bacteria is The Cuban specialized type of Fusarium cerelis.
Cross-section of a banana plant infected with blight
Since 1890, Panama disease has been sweeping banana plantations around the world.
The control technology available at that time was unable to stop its spread, and the global banana industry was gradually eroded.
Banana farmers see the same scene: banana trees are withering away, not growing even a single banana, and the once lush banana orchards are now only a dull yellow.
Large amounts of farmland were forced to be abandoned, and the new botanical gardens could not escape the clutches of fungi, and most banana farmers fell prey to the storm.
We have always been weak in dealing with crop diseases, not only to consider the safety of producing food, but also to consider the self-system of crops is very different from that of humans.
In today's agricultural system, disease control techniques have always been supplemented by prevention: from the beginning of planting, the disease resistance of varieties must be considered.
When dealing with hazards, the acceptable range (such as a small number of insect pests) can be considered not to be treated, and the use of pesticides is already a high-risk treatment method.
Because there is no specialized fungicide, the best way to deal with Panama disease is nothing more than to plant disease-resistant strains.
This was the response of The Union Fruit at that time.
They wanted to find a new variety that would resist Panama disease and look similar to the rice seven bananas.
Those bananas in the aristocratic ornamental gardens are the best choice, although the taste is not satisfactory, but in order to rebuild the banana empire this is definitely the best choice.
After the serious illness swept in, the left is rice seven bananas, and the right is Chinese bananas
In order to allow customers to accept this bad taste plantain, United Fruit conducted an overwhelming advertising campaign.
Coincidentally, the time coincided with the migration of the American population to the city, and the original strong banana complex was diluted a lot.
In addition, in addition to the residents of a few banana producing areas, there are still other options, and most people can see only one banana variety.
Under the mutual promotion of the three factors, Hua Banana successfully became the new hegemon of the banana industry.
Chinese plantain propaganda poster
The decay of the rice seven bananas has made us aware of the dangers of monoculture, and this mode of production to maximize yield means that we have to pay a heavy price at any time.
However, the banana did not get rid of the monoculture mode, and each banana in the supermarket was still a clone of the one next to it.
At the end of the 20th century, researchers discovered a new strain of Fusarium, which is closely related to the pathogenic bacteria of Panama disease, and the evolved bacteria can kill both rice bananas and plantains.
The disease, known as banana blight 4, has been abusive for nearly 30 years, and this time the human's negative resistance has played a role.
In order to prevent the destruction of the banana, countries have established special quarantine systems, and the gravel that is as small as the soles of the feet of the banana garden personnel also needs to be treated with caution.
At the same time, for banana orchards that have been infected, the diseased plants will also be killed and landfilled, and repeated disinfection treatment will be carried out to minimize the harm.
As long as there is a loophole in the blocking strategy, it will fall into the abyss of doom, and humanity is still at a disadvantage in the struggle against the No. 4 species.
To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, researchers have focused on increasing the genetic diversity of bananas grown.
With more than a thousand banana species recorded in the wild, they are able to provide a wealth of genetic selection, and modern science has allowed us to selectively pick out the varieties we need for hybridization (although hybridization is the most complex method).
Today, some banana owners are already replacing the banana with a red banana that grows in southern China, and the road to protecting bananas is a long way to go.
There is often a saying on the Internet that "bananas are extinct", of course, bananas will not go extinct, and thousands of wild bananas can continue to live indefinitely for eating bananas.
It's just that whenever a fungal disease sweeps through, our definition of bananas changes, yesterday it was still yellow, today it becomes red, tomorrow it may be green...
Is the destruction of bananas in our impression also a kind of "banana extinction"?
*References
Ioannis Stergiopoulos, André Drenth and Gert Kema, The Conversation. Can science stop the looming banana extinction?
Rob Dunn. Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future. Little, Brown and Company.
Plant pathology, Wikipedia.
United Fruit Company, Wikipedia.
Mountain to. Take what defends you with delicious bananas. Science squirrel will.