The Description of the Issue and the Project
400 million people worldwide depend on bananas as a primary part of their diet. In Latin America alone, 300,000 people are employed to work plantations to provide bananas for the entire continent. The most prominent player in the industry is Chiquita, previously the United Fruit Company, which has been involved in the area since the turn of the 19th century. Banana production in Panama has suffered a steady decline since 1985 where its export contributed $78 million to the local economy. At the time, the Chiriqui Land company, a subsidiary of the United Fruit Company, owned 70% of the banana production in the country. In regions like Bocas del Toro, the first infrastructure built in most regions was done so by the company. As they exploited the region for banana's they essentially acted as a parallel government, as the land was theirs and not of the state. Through geopolitics, 15,700 hectares of land was given back, but Chiquita can still dictate whether infrastructure is suitable to repurpose.
One of the reasons that Chiquita could hold so much power over the region was the mergence of Fusarium wilt. Local farmers did not have the knowledge or resource to combat a fungus that was depleting their harvest of an important crop. Therefore, in the 1950s governments all around Latin America chose to give Chiquita complete jurisdiction over this land.
Chiquita parted ways with Panama in 2008, where the contribution of bananas to the countries GDP fell to an alarming figure of just 33 million dollars, as the production of bananas was under the 2 million mark. Since then, Panamanians attempted to nationalize banana production through disorganized and uninformed efforts which lead to Chiquita’s return to the region. This didn’t succeed due to trade disagreements, labor unions putting disputes forward, and unorganized attempts at creating new enterprises. If farmers had the resources to more efficiently detect Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. Cubense, they might have a bigger chance at being able to work independently of big corporations that exploit them.
The reason we have selected this particular issue is that Panama is a major banana producer in Latin America, with an annual harvest that reaches 2.5 million tons. The banana industry is an important source of employment and economic development in local communities and is also an important part of the basic diet of the population. The most commonly cultivated banana is the species Musa × paradisiaca, also known as the Cavendish. Moreover, the industry makes approximately 200 million dollars (Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario, 2023).
Our project consists of genetically modifying bacteria in order to detect and protect bananas from F. oxysporum. The detection will occur via a genetic circuit consisting of an inducible promoter that becomes activated in the presence of mycotoxins produced by the fungus. Once these mycotoxins become detected, the bacteria will communicate with other modified bacteria via quorum sensing in order to reach a second type of modified bacteria that will produce proteins capable of inducing systematic acquired resistance (SAR) in the banana plants. We will also create a hardware system that is capable of detecting the communication between the bacteria to subsequently alert farmers about the presence of the pathogenic fungus in the soil.
Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario. (2023). Panamá produce y exporta banano de la mas alta calidad a diversos destinos de Europa, Asia y EEUU. – Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario | MIDA. Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario | MIDA. Retrieved February 4, 2023, from https://mida.gob.pa/panama-produce-y-exporta-banano-de-la-mas-alta-calidad-a-diversos-destinos-de-europa-asia-y-eeuu