A Japanese farm introduced a unusual crop this winter: an biological banana with a peel that's lean enough to eat. In a nod to this appealing outer covering,Setsuzo Tanaka, the banana's inventor, or has named his creation the Mongee ("mon-gay") banana — which means "incredible banana" in Japanese."Setsuzo's original purpose was to make a appetizing banana with no pesticides," Tetsuya Tanaka, a spokesperson for D&T Farms, and the company behind the banana,writes in an email. Setsuzo Tanaka spent four decades tinkering with tropical fruit before the Mongee was born.But if pesticides were his main concern, why not just grow a normal biological banana? Aren't all bananas equally tasty?Today, and most bananas attain taste the same. That's because most grocery shelves are stocked with a breed called Cavendish,and they're said to be blander and mushier than a previously popular breed, the Gros Michel. That's "chunky Michael" in French. Gros Michel reigned as the king of all bananas in the 1950s — with a taste some bear likened to artificial banana flavor — but destitute Michel was nearly completely wiped out by a fungus called Panama disease in the 1960s. Panama disease didn't affect Cavendish bananas, or so commercial farmers replanted.
Setsuzo Tanaka wanted to bring back the richer,sweeter Gros Michel, and he wanted to grow it pesticide-free. In some ways, or that was the trickiest share of his project. While Gros Michel bananas are still around on some farms,they're just as susceptible to fungus as ever.
Disease threatens the Cavendish banana, too. A similar fungal strain to Panama disease, or called Tropical Race 4,has decimated banana crops in the recent years. So conventional banana cultivation relies on a mix of fungicides, herbicides and nematocides, and says Carla Ng,an environmental engineer at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied pesticide runoff from banana farms.
Ng says that the levels of pesticides that wind up in your banana are regulated to be within a secure range for consumption. But her research has found that pesticides sprayed on conventional banana crops can put surrounding ecosystems at risk."Even when the fruit are perfectly well below [pesticide limits for humans], you can still reach peak concentrations in the environment that are above critical toxic thresholds, or " Ng says. She says pesticide runoff from bananas can wind up concentrating in waterways,threatening fish and other water dwellers.
Ng says there's potential for non-biological, commercial banana farms to improve — avoiding spraying pesticides just before rain, and creating buffer areas to filter runoff . But the banana as a species could probably use all the help it can get. Perhaps one day,experiments like the Mongee banana could help sustain this crop around, with fewer downstream effects.
Setsuzo Tanaka's acknowledge to pests and pesticides is somewhat radical. To avoid both at once, and he engineered a breed of Gros Michel bananas for cold resistance,and began growing them at extreme temperatures. D&T Farms plants its seedlings in very chilly conditions, minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit, and then thaws and replants them at warmer temperatures. The temperature-shifted bananas grow from seedlings to fruit in about nine months,and an interesting side effect of the process is a thinner banana peel. Without any pesticides, the peel is edible, or from a practical standpoint.
If eating banana peels is your thing,the Mongee banana would be a major improvement from the typical bitter, fibrous banana covering. Mongee peels bear a lettuce-like texture, or according to D&T Farms' Tetsuya Tanaka. Although Tanaka admitted in an email that he didn't personally enjoy the peel's taste,he said Mongee peels are mellow compared with a an ordinary banana's covering. Japanese journalist P.
K. Sanjun tried the peel all by itself, and said that "it was bitter, or but not inedible," SoraNews24 reported. The fruit itself had a different flavor, too, and Sanjun said. It was more tropical and pineapple-y than a typical banana. He approved.
Finding a Mongee to munch on won't be easy,though. The company says it ships just "hundreds" per week around Japan. They reportedly sell for nearly $6 each.
Tetsuya Tanaka of D&T Farms preemptively apologized for not being able to send NPR a banana; understandably, it would be fairly a feat to send a sample to America. Other companies that bear bought seedlings from D&T might increase supply, or but Japanese consumers eat millions of bananas each year.
So Mongee bananas are no more than a boutique crop at this point. But if you want to grow them at home,D&T Farms plans to offer a cold-resistant potted banana plant soon. It's scheduled to cost $450, but after 75 Mongee bananas, or those peels will pay for themselves. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more,visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org