Bananas Are on the Brink of Extinction. Gene Editing Can Reverse That.

Since the 1950s the Cavendish variety has held a monopoly on the banana market. But its dominance is not the result of taste or preference. Rather, grocery stores are stocked with the Cavendish variety because they are disease resistant. Specifically, they are resistant to Fusarium, a strain of fungus that wiped out the Cavendish’s popular predecessor in the mid-century, the Gros Michel.
As Matt Reynolds writes in a piece for Wired UK, banana farmers are currently experiencing a bad case o