GM could rescue bananas says expert

Canterbury scientists believe they can save bananas from extinction using the same genetic engineering techniques they used to create pest-resistant potatoes.

Crop and Food, Lincoln, scientist Maqbool Ahmad, a banana expert, said GM could be used to develop a banana with resistance to black sigatoka disease, which experts predict could wipe out conventional bananas within 10 years.

Crop and Food has already developed pest resistant potatoes and will apply to plant them all over New Zealand once a moratorium on release of genetically modified organisms expires in October.

Dr Ahmad said developing a disease resistant banana would involve the same techniques used at Crop and Food, Lincoln, to create the GM potatoes and other GM plants.

"It is the same technology. You insert a gene that would make the bananas resistant to the disease."

Dr Ahmad, who recently returned from a trip to Pakistan, said black sigatoka was devastating banana plantations between Karachi and Hyderabad, near the Indian border.

"Normal banana trees are 2m tall. The diseased trees shrink to less than 1m, become shrivelled and black, and eventually die," he said.

Unless bananas were developed with resistance to the disease, many communities in the Third World faced economic and social ruin. New Zealand provides $230 million of foreign aid to countries all over Asia and the Pacific and sponsors aid projects in Africa and Latin America.

Bananas are grown in most of the countries receiving New Zealand aid and in some, such as Samoa or Tonga, they are one of the most important cash crops.

New Zealand had the capacity to do the genetic engineering, Dr Ahmad said.

Developing disease-resistant bananas through conventional breeding was not an option since all edible bananas were sterile clones, Dr Ahmad said.

It was important to start work on the GM banana soon and for as many countries as possible to be involved.

Dr Ahmad said the lack of seeds and pollen meant there was zero risk of contamination of other crops by GM bananas.

- NZPA

Herald feature: Genetic Engineering