Interesting Facts

The Cavendish variety of banana accounts for 95 per cent of bananas shipped to export markets around the world. (That's interesting in itself, but the biggest nightmare of a monoculture has arisen, and the world’s banana crop is under threat from a fungus; Foc-TR4. According to Nature, a strain of Foc wiped out the Gros Michel cultivar, which was the main exported banana variety until the 1950s. Gros Michel plants were then replaced with the Cavendish variety, which is resistant to that Foc strain, but susceptible to the new Foc Tropical Race 4 (Foc-TR4) strain. The disappearance of bananas from supermarket shelves in the UK is one thing, but bananas form a crucial part of the diet of more than 400 million people.)

A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. (They deleted two genes and put the organism on a calorie-restricted diet. If scientists could apply this DNA tweak to humans it would mean we'd live to over 800 years old. Of course it's probably a long way off, the organism in question was a fungus, and apart from a couple of men I know, this wouldn't be easy to transfer to humans.)

The average pillow contains up to 16 types of fungus. (Interestingly feather pillows have fewer species than synthetic ones - particularly in the case of a fungus which sets of asthma. The fungi feed off human skin scales and dust mite faeces. Eeeeew!)