Across the world’s banana producing countries, there are two words which increasingly strike dread into the hearts of those responsible for producing a fruit, which supports 400m people, and is worth £700m in annual UK sales alone: Panama Disease.
The disease, also known as Tropical Race 4 or TR4, is a soil-borne fungus which is quietly laying waste to swathes of banana plantations across 20 countries from the Philippines to Peru, ruining the livelihoods of farmers and putting a question mark over the future of the globe’s most popular fruit.
According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, TR4 is “one of the most aggressive and destructive fungi in the history of agriculture and the world’s greatest threat to banana production”.
One leading expert told The i Paper that for millions of small growers the threat from Panama Disease is “existential”.
For British consumers, the disease could soon diminish supplies of a fruit which last year saw annual domestic demand increase by 70m pieces to 4.5bn bananas – equivalent to 80 a year for each and every UK adult.
