Scientists Uncover Key Insights to Combat Deadly Banana Fungus Threatening Cavendish Variety

In the news that appeared last October, it was said that a fungus that affected Cavendish bananas, the most consumed type of banana in the world, could destroy the popular fruit. According to scientists, these bananas are infected with a fungus called fusarium, and the Tropical Race disease, also known as the Panama Disease, caused by this fungus, destroys the bananas completely.

BANANAS ARE NOT GROWN

The disease starts in the roots of the banana tree and blocks the vascular bundles. Bananas infected with wilt rot. However, the new research in Popular Science says that scientists have a plan against this.

That fusarium fungus can infect more than 100 plants.

This epidemic caused the destruction of the Gros Michel banana crop in 1950.

According to a new article published on August 16 in the journal Nature Microbiology, scientists have identified the molecular mechanisms behind this fungus that destroys bananas. It paves the way for developing new treatments and strategies against this pathogen.

This fungus, abbreviated as Fusarium, or Foc TR4, does not only affect bananas. “Fusarium oxysporum, a species complex, can infect more than 100 different plants,” study co-author Li-Jun Ma, a molecular biologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Popular Science. he says.

Fusarium wilt of banana is currently decimating the world’s most popular commercially available Cavendish banana. When this type of fungus is present in a banana field, the fungus cannot be eradicated, making it almost impossible to produce Cavendish bananas in the future.

The Fusarium oxysporum genome can be divided into two parts: core genome and accessory genome. The core genome does all the basic work that keeps the genome going. The auxiliary genome is transferred from strain to strain (Groups of different subspecies of a bacterium or virus with genetic differences between them are called can change freely.

Gros Michel bananas were the first victims of this fungus. In response, the Cavendish variety was developed. This strain was thought to be resistant to disease, but although the disease stopped for a while, it continued to spread. In the 1990s, another banana wilt disease appeared, spreading from Southeast Asia to Central America.

In the new research, the team focused on the progress of the TR4 genome in the Cavendish banana for ten years. Accordingly, they discovered that the outbreak actually came from the same pathogen that destroyed crops in the 1950s.

Ma emphasized the following in the press release issued on the subject:

“We now know that TR4, the pathogen that destroyed Cavendish bananas, did not evolve from the strain that destroyed Gros Michel bananas.”

Finding that Foc TR4 has two purposes when it attacks a plant, the team realized that it also uses some auxiliary genes. These genes direct nitric oxide production and detoxification mechanisms in fungi.

Although the team still does not know how this gas contributes to the attack of diseases in the Cavendish banana, they were able to confirm that the presence of Foc TR4 is significantly reduced if two genes that control has suppressed the production of nitric oxide.

“The identification of these accessory genetic sequences offers many strategic ways to reduce or control the spread of Foc TR4,” said Yong Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher and co-author of the study, in a statement. he says.