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https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Agriculture/Banana-growers-fight-renewed-extinction-risk-as-lethal-fungus-spreads?utm_campaign=GL_asia_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=NA_newsletter&utm_content=article_link&del_type=1&pub_date=20220808190000&seq_num=29&si=44594 Banana growers fight renewed extinction risk as lethal fungus spreads Resurgence of Panama disease threatens one of world's most valuable crops Bananas are displayed at a shop in Halle, Belgium. Eaten across the world, the fruit is grown in the tropics, from Southeast Asia to Latin America. © Reuters KOJI KATO, Nikkei science editorAugust 8, 2022 00:27 JST TOKYO -- Decades after decimating banana plants worldwide, Panama disease once again threatens to wipe out the crop key to economies across Asia, Latin America and beyond. Vietnam will lose up to 71% of its banana-producing land in 25 years to a type of fungus called Fusarium, warned a scientific paper published in February by researchers from institutions including Vietnam's Plant Resources Center and Belgium's Meise Botanic Garden. Fusarium enters the banana plants through its roots and destroys its veins, causing the plant to wilt. The spores can contaminate soil for decades. Bananas are "among the most important food crops worldwide," said Steven Janssens, one of the authors. And if Fusarium continues to spread, he says that "the impact on humanity could be quite dramatic." A separate study cited in the paper predicted a similar loss of banana-producing land in China and the Philippines. The dangers of Fusarium came under the spotlight in the 1950s, when the fungus devastated banana plants in and around Panama. Dubbed Panama disease, the epidemic subsided only after inflicting billions of dollars in damage to growers and nearly wiping out production of the Gros Michel cultivar. Half of the bananas grown in the world today are the Cavendish, which has been relatively resistant to Fusarium wilt. But a new strain that emerged in the 1990s is now attacking Cavendish bananas in Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The strain, called tropical race 4 or TR4, was also found in Colombia in 2019 and Peru in 2021, sparking concerns that the world's entire banana crop may be at risk of extinction. The modern banana is descended from a seedless variety that began to be cultivated in Southeast Asia around 5,000 B.C. or earlier. Growers propagate plants through cuttings that are genetically identical to the "parent" plant, heightening the risk of populations being wiped out by a pathogen like TR4. The lack of seeds makes it trickier to breed new varieties with better disease resistance. More than 100 million metric tons of bananas are produced worldwide annually, and there have been no signs of a significant decline. "I don't think bananas will go extinct," said Tsutomu Arie, a professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) who specializes in plant pathology. It is hard to gauge just how endangered the world's banana population is, but TR4 is a source of much anxiety in the industry. The fungal strain has been reported in roughly 20 countries, hitching rides on infected plants or on people via contaminated soil or planting material. The only sure way to curb its spread is by quarantine. According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, India is the world's top banana producer at 31.5 million metric tons, followed by China with 11.51 million metric tons, then Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador and the Philippines. Since some of these countries grow much of their crop for domestic consumption, most exports come from Central and South America. The economic impact of the banana market has been estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, and the loss of even a portion of that would be felt by the global economy. Workers unload bananas from trucks at a market in Kolkata. India is the world's top producer of the fruit, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. © Reuters Vaccination is among the strategies that Arie and others are working on to deal with TR4. Inoculating plants with a harmless variety of Fusarium fungus would boost resistance to the more dangerous type or keep it away from their roots. Starting in fiscal 2023, a Japanese team led by TUAT will work with partners including La Molina National Agrarian University in Peru on countermeasures including diagnosis and soil management. James Dale, a professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, said his team has adopted gene editing to develop banana trees that are hardy against TR4. With the introduction of genetically modified bananas strictly regulated, the variety is not expected to be grown for commercial purposes in Australia by the end of 2024. Yet this represents a significant advance. "It contains a resistance gene that we transferred from a wild banana that is immune to TR4," said Dale. Some scientists blame the fungal disease's spread on decades of cultivating and producing bananas selected only to satisfy taste buds. Diversity is thought to shield against plant disease epidemics. Hundreds of varieties of bananas grow within the "banana belt" found up to 30 degrees north and south of the equator. Bananas are not only a food, but also a key source of revenue. Nearly 500 million people are estimated to depend on bananas as a staple food.

Anyone knows what happened to Chevrolet? It's cheap and safe. Not many budget cars are as safe as Chevrolet. Will they come back?

I think Chee Cheong Fun is still going strong. Quite a standard of me when going for dim sum. Last time have this whitish coconut cake.

Heard it over 88.3FM radio this morning so decided to Google a bit and found the following interesting piece of scientific news: From Stuff: http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/8502191/Mens-...osome-is-doomed Men's sex chromosome is doomed! Last updated 08:06 03/04/2013 The poorly designed Y chromosome that makes men is degrading rapidly and will disappear, even if humans are still around. Evolutionary geneticist Jenny Graves says that while the process is likely to happen within the next five million years, it could have begun in some isolated groups. "As long as something came along it its stead, we would not even suspect without checking the chromosomes," she said on Tuesday. Professor Graves, who first made the prediction some years ago, was in Canberra to give a public lecture on the subject for the Australian Academy of Science. There have been dissenting research papers, but her prediction hasn't changed. "It's very bad news for all the men here," she told her audience. Professor Graves has been studying sex-determining genes in Australian animals to shed light on human genetics. "You would think that sex is so important it wouldn't change a lot. But it changes all over the place and the Y chromosome sort of self-destructs," she said. Y is always in the male and active mostly in the testes - making sperm. That is a "very dangerous" place because there's a lot of cell division going on, she says. With every split there's a chance for a mutation or gene loss. "The X chromosome is all alone in the male, but in the female it has a friend so it can swap bits and repair itself. If the Y gets a hit it's a downward spiral." The X has about 1000 genes left, too many relating to sex and intelligence, she says. The smaller Y started with about 1700 genes but only has 45 left, and that's mostly "junk". "It is a lovely example of what I call dumb design," she said. "It is an evolutionary accident." If humans don't become extinct, new sex-determining genes and chromosomes will evolve, maybe leading to the evolution of new hominid species. This had happened in the Japanese spiny rat, which had survived the loss of its Y, she said. Professor Graves is thinker-in-residence at Canberra University's Institute for Applied Ecology, a distinguished professor at the La Trobe Institute of Molecular Science, an ANU emeritus professor and University of Melbourne Professorial fellow.

August 2011 will see the death of the PQP $18,444 batch from the $101 COE. I'm listing whatever I've never seen on sgcarmart to have been renewed before. So things like VW Beetle, EG Civic and Corolla KE100 won't be included. Honda Civic EF Mazda 121 Nissan Sunny (B13) Nissan Presea Proton Saga (not that anyone's sorry) Endangered species don't count (endangered =/= extinct)

Last time people like to paste big big stickers on their cars that said SOHC or DOHC. There was a time when many cars would have a tiger tail dangling out the boot. White used to be the colour for private Mercedes. This died almost overnight when the taxis came along.

Inspired by the other thread. Let's have your predictions. My predictions would be: 1) Tear-out parking coupons. To be replaced by cashcard systems or SMS-based systems or some other new thing. 2) Paper road-tax discs. To be replaced by pure-electronic registration - if they can do it for OPC, why not for all cars? 3) Finally (this will take the longest, since they just spent money on implementing new EZ-link cashcard-based IUs and new gantries), removal of in-vehicle units and all ERP gantries, to be replaced by GPS-based road taxation.

Oh the horrors! Ker-ba-BOOMZ again. New Ms Singapore World thinks Merlion really existed and went extinct. Shin Ming newspaper says she has zero IQ.

Hey guys, While I was driving then this car caught my attention, I thot its an old MR-2 but on second look it is a GTO ! It has been ages since I last saw this rare treasure.

Have you seen it b4?

Seems that there is a trend of local distributors slowly phasing manual tranmission cars out of their showrooms, even though manual models are available in other overseas markets. And I thought only European marques used to do that. I walked into Nissan's showroom, said I was after a manual car, the salesguy told me, Then your choice is simple: You can get either the Sunny, or the 350Z. Everyone's favourite Corolla Altis? Not available in manual. Mazda's manual tranmission models are the MX-5, Mazda 6 MPS and the RX8. Can I have a Mazda 3 SP in manual, please? Or at the very least, a Mazda 2 SP? While it is true that most of the other brands still have manual tranmissions, Nissan and Mazda are doing something that the others may follow in time to come. But it may be down to what the market wants. I was at Borneo Leng Kee on the weekend, and asked to test drive the Vios and Yaris, both in manual. It was a Sunday, and about 4pm in the afternoon, yet both cars were cold-started(!). No one even bothered to test the manual cars that day, and the showroom was chock full of customers. Maybe its because I am a single car buyer, as opposed to a family purchase, in which the car has to suit the wife also. But I've always felt driving an auto is a bit......brain-dead. You really only need your right hand and right leg to drive it, so you might as well be paralysed on your left. You still can operate the car!

Here's irrefutable proof oversized beasts still roam the earth and will continue to flourish in the years to come. With its huge gaping jaws and armed with, er, teeth to match, the mammoth is not only very much alive and kicking, it's also evolved to be a highly omnivorous beast, gluping down precious resources faster than we can feed it. Of course, meanwhile, I sense some petro-chemical shareholder silently jumping for joy as the profits for next year are expected to beat the GDP of Germany and France put together. Behold, this latest specimen, snapped just this morning while peacefully grazing on the carpets of exotic Terminal 2....apologies for the poor 0.8megapixel quality, tho' Footnote - despite early speculations, it is believed that apart from its heft, this beast bears no relation to another similarly-sized but far less-developed behemoth called the Stavic Meanwhile, i eagerly await praises/hate mail from animal lovers in my private message folder for my insensitivities towards the real animal kingdom