Goldfinger Banana

Womenscorner Desk
November 4, 2020

The Goldfinger banana (FHIA-01) may be a banana cultivar developed in Honduras. The cultivar, developed at the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research (FHIA) by a team of scientists led by Phillip Rowe and Franklin Rosales, has been bred to be pest-resistant (specifically against the black sigatoka) and crop-yielding.

The roots of the Goldfinger's development are often traced back to an initiative to develop new banana breeds by the United Fruit Company begun as early as 1959. This was later haunted by the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research, supported by organizations like Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The initiative drew on the gene pool of quite 800 banana cultivars from Southeast Asia . Throughout the event of the banana, the developers took the view that conventional hybridization is more important than alternative means, like gene-splicing.

The first big breakthrough came in 1977, with the event of a hybrid which provided an honest banana bunch size, and was immune to both burrowing nematode and Race 4 of Panama disease. The banana's pest-resistance, further improved later, has environmental and economic aspects. Antifungal chemicals cost quite $750 per hectare a year, and are very damaging to the environment.

The Goldfinger was unveiled in Canada in 1994 by the IDRC. The Goldfinger takes longer than other banana varieties to mature, but is more immune to cold, wind and pestilence. It grows to 4.3 meters (14 feet).

Origin – Honduras, Central America

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