Aug 10, 2021 07:04 PM
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...o-disease/
EXCERPTS: Bananas are one of the most important food crops in the world. [...] But ... All the cultivated banana varieties are susceptible to diseases — and Banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is particularly problematic...
[...] being pretty much clones doesn’t really help the case — bananas are commercially propagated through cuttings, which means that banana growers virtually clone the plants. This lack of genetic variety makes them doubly susceptible to pests and disease, and we’ve seen in the past that infections can wipe out entire cultivars of bananas (until the 1950s, the Gros Michel banana cultivar was dominant, and it was wiped out by an outbreak of the Panama disease; now, Cavendish bananas account for around half of the global production, but they too are vulnerable).
With this in mind, researchers from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) scientists in Kenya set out to use genetic modifications to produce more resilient bananas. They used CRISPR/Cas9, a precise but also relatively affordable gene-editing tool, a discovery that earned a Nobel Prize in 2020.
“Recent advances in CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing can accelerate banana improvement,” the researchers write in the study. “The availability of reference genome sequences and the CRISPR/Cas9-editing system has made it possible to develop disease-resistant banana by precisely editing the endogenous gene.” (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: Bananas are one of the most important food crops in the world. [...] But ... All the cultivated banana varieties are susceptible to diseases — and Banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is particularly problematic...
[...] being pretty much clones doesn’t really help the case — bananas are commercially propagated through cuttings, which means that banana growers virtually clone the plants. This lack of genetic variety makes them doubly susceptible to pests and disease, and we’ve seen in the past that infections can wipe out entire cultivars of bananas (until the 1950s, the Gros Michel banana cultivar was dominant, and it was wiped out by an outbreak of the Panama disease; now, Cavendish bananas account for around half of the global production, but they too are vulnerable).
With this in mind, researchers from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) scientists in Kenya set out to use genetic modifications to produce more resilient bananas. They used CRISPR/Cas9, a precise but also relatively affordable gene-editing tool, a discovery that earned a Nobel Prize in 2020.
“Recent advances in CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing can accelerate banana improvement,” the researchers write in the study. “The availability of reference genome sequences and the CRISPR/Cas9-editing system has made it possible to develop disease-resistant banana by precisely editing the endogenous gene.” (MORE - details)