02-24-2018, 06:26 AM
Unfortunately no resistant varieties exist to date.
BBTV is a DNA virus and the attempts to use transgenic (GMO) technology to transform a resistant variety similar to how the GMO papaya is resistant to papaya ringspot virus have been unsuccessful. Papaya ringspot virus is an RNA virus and the RNAi technique or post transcriptional gene silencing is not very effective for most DNA viruses.
There is some hope however with the new CRISPR-Cas system. Unfortunately bananas take a very long time to transform (make a GMO variety) and the regulatory hurdles in order to make any possible future resistant variety available commercially are substantial. So while this may occur down the road it will likely be quite sometime from now. : /
BBTV is a DNA virus and the attempts to use transgenic (GMO) technology to transform a resistant variety similar to how the GMO papaya is resistant to papaya ringspot virus have been unsuccessful. Papaya ringspot virus is an RNA virus and the RNAi technique or post transcriptional gene silencing is not very effective for most DNA viruses.
There is some hope however with the new CRISPR-Cas system. Unfortunately bananas take a very long time to transform (make a GMO variety) and the regulatory hurdles in order to make any possible future resistant variety available commercially are substantial. So while this may occur down the road it will likely be quite sometime from now. : /