If you know a little bit about bananas, you have heard the name, Cavendish—it’s the banana in every grocery store around the world. It has been that way since the last strain of banana was wiped out, in the 1950s... never heard about that? But you have heard of the infamous Potato famine—similar set of circumstances; in both cases, there was a monoculture (single strain or species of crop) and then a blight that wiped that particular plant out. The original banana strain, Gros Michel, went ‘extinct’ to a fungus in the soil, called Panama disease. The banana we love today is known as the Cavendish, but when it began to replace the Gros Michel, there was much resentment towards the taste. Apparently, the bananas we used to eat, were much better than what we eat today…
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