Tropical Race Four appeared in Taiwan in the late eighties, and destroyed roughly seventy per cent of the island’s Cavendish plantations. In Indonesia, more than twelve thousand acres of export bananas were abandoned; in Malaysia, a local newspaper branded the disease ”the H.I.V. of banana plantations.” When the fungus reached China and the Philippines, the effect was equally ruinous. Australia was next. Scientists believe that Tropical Race Four, which has caused tens of millions of dollars’ worth of damage, will ultimately find its way to Central America-and to the fruit that Americans buy.