Though it first surfaced in Australia, it devastated banana plantations in Panama, and soon the dreaded banana wilt came to be known as Panama Disease. It resisted fungicides and, once established in a plantation, it sowed devastation. Worse, soil contaminated with the fungus would remain toxic for decades, forcing growers to abandon prime plantation lands.

Growers initially tried to outrun fusarium wilt, clear-cutting tropical forests and laying out new plantations to harbor their Big Mikes. But the fungus followed them. By the 1920s, banana shortages had become a growing problem (you can thank the fusarium wilt for that decade's hit song "Yes! We Have No Bananas").

The big fruit companies sought to find a replacement. United Fruit conducted extensive trials in the 1920s but balked at the idea of introducing new varieties into the market. Consumers would eat only Big Mikes, the thinking went, and trying to change that would be the death of the company.

United Fruit tried to protect the Big Mike, flooding infected fields in the mistaken belief this would sweep away the fungus. Instead, it destroyed microbial competitors and the fungus returned with startling ferocity.

Then a smaller company, Standard Fruit, seeing the writing on the wall, began experimenting with a new family of bananas.