Climate change and deadly plant diseases have put banana growing worldwide in crisis. The biggest threat is Tropical Race 4 (TR4), which attacks the Cavendish, the banana in most of the world's fruit bowls. Researchers now say there is new hope of saving it, RTV Online reports.
About 139 million tonnes of bananas are produced each year. There are more than a thousand varieties, but most people eat the Cavendish, which took over the market after Panama disease wiped out the 'Gros Michel' from the 1950s. Commercial Cavendish plants are sterile clones with identical genes, so they share the same vulnerability to disease.
Dr Jose De Vega, a crop genomics specialist at the Earlham Institute in Norwich, said TR4 has spread from South-East Asia to Australia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The most worrying news came in December 2025 from Ecuador, the world's largest banana exporter.
The disease threatens global banana supplies and with them the food security and livelihoods of millions of people in the tropics, Dr De Vega said. Growers from Guatemala to Malawi fear heavy losses.
Yelloway, a joint research venture of the banana company Chiquita and the crop-improvement firm KeyGene, says it has developed a fertile Cavendish variety. Because it can reproduce, the partners say, it opens the way to breeding new disease-resistant, commercially viable bananas by crossing.
Reported by the RTV Online desk.
Photo: Women cleaning Cavendish bananas for packing on a plantation in Ecuador, David Brossard / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Source: RTV Online
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