10-30-2016, 10:42 AM
It does impact far more than cavendish types and is considered potentially much more dire than race 1, which is in Hawaii. The bigger problem is that it is already in many places in the world where people depend on bananas for their immediate survival. There is also no reason to think that any of the extremely rare Hawaiian bananas would be immune to tropical race 4. Half of those have already gone extinct in the past century with our many existing banana diseases. It's very likely that all currently cultivated varieties in Hawaii can get bunchy top. Ultimately if we want to preserve the genetic diversity in existing cultivars it's going to mean keeping them going by inserting genes, likely from other bananas, that can allow them to survive bunchy top, various strains of Panama Disease, sigatoka, etc. Unfortunately scientific ignorance and fear is not only going to doom many cultivars, but also many people who will be impacted by either starvation or worse nutrition by relying on less healthy foods for their calories. As is, there are places in the world where average banana/plantain consumption is 4 or more pounds per day!