Dan Koeppel Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, talks about all things bananas, including Banana Republics, the fruit's role in the Garden of Eden, the source of slipping on banana peel gags, and its current status as an endangered species.

What initially got you interested in writing about the Banana?

I read a small article in a science journal about an incurable disease that - even though the general public hadn’t heard of it - had the potential to destroy the world’s banana crop. I ended up with a magazine assignment, and wrote a story on the disease. I love bananas, and I couldn’t believe that they could disappear.


Is it true that the bananas we eat now are not the same as the bananas from fifty years ago?

That’s right. The banana our grandparents ate was a different - and most people say better tasting - breed called the Gros Michel. But that banana was wiped out by a variant of the blight, called Panama Disease, that now threatens our version of the fruit, called the Cavendish.


Is it really possible that the banana could one day be extinct?

The Cavendish banana was adopted because it was immune to Panama Disease. But bananas are generally very weak, because, like human identical twins, each one is an exact genetic duplicate of the other. What makes one banana sick makes all bananas sick. So if something really virulent comes along, it can be a huge problem.


What are Banana Republics? ...