Why We're All Eating Clones Of The Exact Same Banana

Cloning has long been an obsession in pop culture, with franchises from "Star Wars" to "Jurassic Park" exploring the moral complexities and ethics that cloning brings up. The concept may seem like science fiction, but did you know that you probably have a clone of your very own in your kitchen right now? No, not the creepy clown cookie jar you inherited from your grandmother, but the bananas sitting in your fruit bowl! That's right, since about the 1960s, just about every commercially purchased banana in the Western world has been a near-identical clone of a yellow predecessor. 

Used in tons of delicious recipes, from perfect banana bread to breakfast smoothies, bananas have long been one of the most popular items in the grocery store. So, when the plant started rapidly dying across plantations in the 1960s, scientists and farmers worked quickly to find a replacement. The strain they came up with is what we now call the Cavendish banana. However, there was a flaw with this replacement plan — Cavendish banana seeds are sterile, meaning they rely on propagation through cloning to produce new plants. This means almost every Cavendish banana you purchase today is a replica of the exact same fruit.

Before an unexpected fungal disease known as Fusarium wilt ravaged plantations around the world, the most popular kind of banana was the Gros Michel or "Big Mike" banana, a sweeter, creamier, and more sizable fruit than the one we know today. To combat this disease, scientists and farmers reintroduced Cavendish bananas, a variety resistant to the disease, through a genetic cloning process. Cavendish bananas were first grown in England at the Chatsworth Estate in the 1800s, but they weren't commercially introduced until necessity called for them.

The result of both the fungal disease and the lack of biodiversity on plantations made the "Big Mike" banana go virtually extinct, leaving us with the Cavendish banana clones that we're familiar with today. The lack of diversity in banana species may have solved the Fusarium wilt problem temporarily, but the plant is still susceptible to another potential wipeout. (If this doesn't give you the motivation to get over your banana hang-ups and even use the overripe bunch languishing in your fruit bowl, nothing will.) So, the next time you take a bite of the world's most popular fruit, savor it! Who knows how long it'll be on top?