Do you sometimes wonder why one never sees the huge stalks of bananas that used to appear in stores, where you or the store employee would cut of what you wanted?

I used to think it was pure merchandising that caused the change to individual hands of bananas being shipped, only. Not so.

Those bananas, back in days of yore, were a different breed or strain. I don't recall the name of that strain, but what we get today are called Cavendish. There was a blight that attacked what I'll call "the stalk bananas", and either wiped them out or made major quality problems, so the Cavendish was developed or discovered. But the Cavendish is too tender, and can't stand the handling of the whole stalks in shipping, so it HAS to be shipped in individual hands.

That's okay, I suppose, but here's the bad news: There's another banana blight going around, which attacks the Cavendish strain. The banana industry is doing what it can to limit the blight's spread, but it looks like the Cavendish strain may be wiped out worldwide in not too many years.

Now here's the real bummer: Bananas are not grown from seed, but from cuttings, and it's difficult to develop a new (hopefully blight-resistant) strain. We may see a time when sweet dessert bananas, as opposed to the not-too-sweet cooking bananas called plaintains, will be unavailable.

Dave Oesterreich