In December 2019, professors Barath Raghavan and Mikey Kantar and doctoral candidate Xiao Fu had an idea: What if we could use bananas to stop wildfires? 

In a study published Oct. 24, the team of researchers used computer simulations to see how crops of bananas, known as a banana buffer, could slow or stop a simulated version of the Tubbs fire, which struck Northern California in 2017. Through these simulations, the team found that banana buffers can delay a fire by just over five hours and can remain effective as climates in California get warmer.

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With the risk and intensity of wildfires increasing due to climate change, Raghavan, an associate professor of computer science, said that the need for their research is high, especially since living spaces and infrastructure in Southern California are located next to areas that are prone to wildfires — a relationship known as the wildland-urban interface.

“In a place like California — where we have a dry season in the middle of the year — even if the total amount of rainfall stays the same as the temperature goes up, the amount of actual water in the ground goes down, and that means our trees and grasses are all at higher fire risk,” Raghavan said. 

Reflecting on ways states have managed wildfires in the status quo, Raghavan said current wildfire mitigation strategies are effective to an extent, but costly.

“Currently, things city governments, county governments and state parks are doing [to mitigate wildfires] is thinning dead trees and mowing overgrown wildland-urban interface regions to minimize fire risk,” Raghavan said. “They also set a fire during a low risk time to thin out dead wood, but the return on investment is relatively low.” 

While the team started its study with multiple crops, Raghavan said bananas have many qualities that make them an appealing choice for investigation due to their fire resistant qualities and composition. 

“In the case of bananas, people call them banana trees, but they’re not woody trees,” Raghavan said. “If you chop into it, banana plants are more than 95% water and are just very juicy pulp. That’s what gives it its fire resistant properties.” 

Bananas are also advantageous because they are short-cycle crops that can produce yield quickly and have a good root system for erosion control.

While the study shows potential for bananas to act as a fire buffer, Kantar, an associate professor of Tropical Agriculture and Soil at the University of Hawai’i, said that the biggest limitation behind their experiment is validating the results of their simulations by conducting real-life testing. Currently, the team has been working with various organizations in Hawaii towards getting permits to conduct burn tests. Because burn tests cannot be rerun, conducting real-life testing is a time-consuming process that could take up to nine months for re-trial.  

Fu, a doctoral candidate studying computer science, said the study is significant because it provides an alternative method of treating wildfires that is less disruptive to the natural environment.

“Rather than what we did in the past such as trimming down trees, this study shows that there are more economical ways to slow down fires so that we can live in peace with fires,” Fu said. “Additionally, [banana buffers] would not damage properties and people’s lives and is a natural process.” 

Raghavan said the results of this study could help inform a larger study to help farmers design their environments. 

“Let’s say you have a piece of land,” Ragavan said. “Could we design a computational system that can help figure out for the farmer what kinds of crops they should plant there? Sometimes people call these agroforestry systems.”