Every Banana Is a Twin

The yellow banana you find in most stores is a type called the Cavendish. If you cut one open, you will see tiny black dots in the middle. Those dots are all that is left of seeds, and they cannot grow into new plants. So how do farmers get new banana plants?

Farmers use cuttings instead of seeds. A banana plant grows small new shoots around its base, called suckers. Farmers cut these off and plant them, and each one grows into a new banana plant. The new plant has exactly the same genes as the old one. In other words, it is a clone.

This means that almost every Cavendish banana in the world is a genetic twin of the others. That is useful, because every banana tastes the same and ripens in the same way. But it also has a weak point: if a disease can harm one plant, it can harm all of them.

This has happened before. Many years ago, most stores sold a different banana, the Gros Michel. A disease in the soil spread through the farms, and growers changed to the Cavendish, which could resist it. Today a new form of that disease can harm the Cavendish too, so scientists are working on new kinds of bananas.