Malaysia’s bananas are “bleeding” & they might end up going extinct.

There’s been a silent killer that’s been going around Malaysia, destroying farmers’ bananas since 2007: the Banana Blood Disease. No, it’s got nothing to do with any body part (on a human, that is). This ailment is probably named as such because it actually causes affected bananas to “bleed” when cut.

It devastates banana crops, leaving the efforts of our local banana farmers fruitless (ha ha sob), but what’s even scarier than that is the fact that the disease is poised to spread around Southeast Asia. Imagine that. Where did it come from, though, and how did it touch Malaysian shores?

The horrifying disease came all the way from Indonesia

More specifically, Banana Blood Disease was first reported in Kayuadi Island, South Sulawesi in the early 1900s, and was so bad that instead of salvaging the afflicted banana plantations, whoever the poor farmer was straight up abandoned them. A Swiss botanist, Ernst Gäumann, isolated the source of disease in the 1920s – it was a bacteria which he named Pseudomonas celebensis. Gäumann also found that even though the disease was widespread throughout southern Sulawesi, it wasn’t really a thing in the surrounding Javanese islands, so that’s where it likely originated from.

Now, let’s talk symptoms. The disease causes affected banana plants to wilt, and discoloration and internal rot of the banana fruits themselves. That second part is what gives rise to the red-brown sludge that’s eerily similar to blood. A study done by Jane Ray, a student studying the biology and epidemiology of Blood disease and her colleagues from the University of Queensland revealed that 18 types of bananas are vulnerable to the disease, including the world’s most popular species of banana, the Cavendish.

It’s not really clear how the disease made it to Malaysia, but we do know from a research paper published in 2014 that the first reports of Banana Blood Disease here were from plantations in Johor after a severe flood hit the state in 2007.

Is there a cure for the disease?

Oh yeah, we forgot to mention this earlier – there is no cure for Banana Blood Disease, and it’s entirely possible for certain species of bananas to be wiped out if this thing gets out of hand. For now, the disease can only be contained and managed, says Ray:

Without intervention, the losses are likely to be devastating due to epidemics in areas where growers have no experience managing this disease… I am determined to understand this disease and use this information to develop improved diseases management options, helping to reduce crop loss and mitigate the risk of spread to new areas, improving food security in the tropics – Jane Ray, in an interview with the University of Queensland

Basically, to prevent the spreading of the disease, farmers and employees on farms will have to keep and eye on their plantations so it doesn’t go… bananas.