A few decades ago, there was a much better banana widely available. It's called the Gros Michel and those in the know say they are bigger, tastier and creamier than the bananas in the shops today.
They're still around, but they're almost impossible to find. The Cavendish, the type of banana you're probably most familiar with, only became the dominant banana around the 1950s when an infection of Panama disease basically wiped out the world's supply of Gros Michel. The more disease-resistant Cavendish now make up nearly the entire world market of bananas, and 95 percent of Australia's supply.
"When Panama disease wiped out the Gros Michel, we found out the Cavendish grew well and we jumped on board," said Steve Lavis from Mission Beach Tissue Culture, a laboratory and nursery for banana propogation.
The Queensland Department of Agriculture was growing a patch of Gros Michel bananas in a study on the deadly Tropical Race 4 or TR4 disease, a mutated version of Panama disease, but there is little commercial supply. "Gros Michel are still around in Australia, but I’m not interested in it. It's never going to be commercially any good for me, because there’s this disease. There’s no cure and no alternative or treatment, chemically or mechanically," Lavis told ten daily.
People like Lavis, who work with the genetics of food, are trying to provide plants that are free from disease. "I've been dealing with TR4 since 1997. We didn't really have to deal with it in our major growing area until 2015. It's been moving around Asia, it has wrecked the Chinese banana industry. It hitched a ride to Australia through Indonesia, now it's in Mauritius and it will get to central America.”
"It’s spreading rapidly. We’ve lost the Gros Michel already, the Cavendish could be the next, so we’re trying to desperately breed a version resistant to the disease."