Once upon a time the most exported banana, the Gros Michel, succumbed to a fungus that made it commercially extinct. Now it appears that the current most exported banana, the Cavendish, is undergoing the same fate. There is much more information out there about this and we’re likely to be able to watch a slow motion disaster happening before our eyes. But this is not why I started with don’t panic. If I need to go without bananas I’ll go without bananas - although I did have one with my oatmeal this morning (okay I had Fruit Loops but there was still a banana in it). My panic comes from when I see a news story about the same type of fate possibly affecting coffee.
Did you read that, coffee. Coffee, I say.
Figure 1. Coffee Beans
There is a rust disease, a fungus, that turns the leaves to a orange/rust color, that can destroy commercial coffee plantations. It happened years ago in Southeast Asia. Sri Lanka now produces mostly tea. The rust is still out there potentially recking havoc.
One recent battleground of the spreading pestilence, caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix, is Columbia. The bad news is (is the news so far not bad enough); let me try again. The really bad news is, that the fungus seems to prefer to decimate the coffee that is smoother tasting not affecting the more bitter varieties as much. Starbuck drinkers will not notice the difference but the rest of us will. The smoother coffee comes from Coffea arabica while the more bitter variety is Coffea robusta.
There is good news.
First, coffee is not a monoculture like Gros Michel and Cavendish bananas and most likely we will not see the total commercial devastation of coffee plants. Also, It's possible that help may be at hand via knowledge of the coffee genome. France Denoeud and 63 other authors (I kid you not 64 total authors to this 4 page paper) have analyzed the genome of coffee back in 2014.
Side note: What force accelerates coffee toward light fabric.
Reddit answer from secretlyawolf:
“This is due to the principle that nature abhors the color white. It is the same principle that causes space to be mostly black. This is why black coffee has a greater acceleration towards white fabric than coffee with cream and sugar. The practice of putting cream and sugar was originally introduced to reduce the likelihood of coffee stains, but nowadays most people do it because they have become accustomed to the sweetness and creaminess.”
Non-sequitor:
Speaking of coffee, where is the coffee bean snail - genus Melampus - I’ve been looking these little guys for some time - in Maine, in Belize, in Massachusetts- where they at? Did a fungus get them?
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Do not, I repeat, do not put these snails into your coffee grinder.
More reading: Get this banana book its terrific.
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel published in 2007.
France Denoeud et al. 2014. The coffee genome provides insight into the convergent evolution of caffeine biosynthesis. Science 345: 1181-1184.