According to Professor James Dale, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), when Banana Bunchy Top Virus (BBTV) struck Australia in 1913, it brought down the amount of plantations in South East Queensland from more than 500 to four in a decade, but strict control measures were able to reign in the disease.
One hundred years later, BBTV is still causing problems internationally, particularly in Africa where it has wreaked havoc in many countries that don’t have an effective level of regulatory oversight for containment.
And as growers around the world know well, BBTV is not the only problem that threatens their livelihoods, and biotechnology may have a role to play in saving their crops from these multitudes of diseases.
Read the full, original story here: “GM bananas: from nutrition to disease resistance”
