Researchers from the Netherlands discovered bananas resistant to the disease TR4, which threatens to destroy the production of the world's best-selling Cavendish variety.

Led by a leading tropical phytopathology expert, Professor Herth Kem, a team of scientists evaluated the potential resistance of many different types of bananas from around the world, as well as genetically modified varieties and random mutations.

According to agronomist engineer and graduate student Fernando Alexander Garcia-Bastidas, a key member of the project team, a number of resistant varieties have already been found, as well as sources of resistance to the disease that can be used in subsequent breeding programs.

Cavendish Banana Variety

He explains that the group’s ultimate goal is to develop a commercially viable replacement for the Cavendish variety. The variety must not only fight with TR4, but also be consistent with today's market leader in terms of commercial attractiveness, competitiveness and reliability in the supply chain.

Over the past six years, Garcia-Bastidas has played a central role in screening over 250 different types of bananas by developing a series of evaluation protocols and testing 20,000 individual plants.

“If one of them is sustainable and meets market expectations, we have a replacement for Cavendish,” he says.

Substitution, of course, is not a new phenomenon for the international trade in bananas. Cavendish himself replaced the dominant Gross-Michel in the last century, after the latter was destroyed by its own predecessor TR4 TR1.