Gros Michel | banana variety (2024)

…the late 1950s with the Gros Michel dessert variety, which had dominated the world’s commercial banana business. Richer and sweeter than the modern Cavendish, the Gros Michel fell victim to an invading soil fungus that causes Panama disease, a form of Fusarium wilt. Powerless to breed resistance into the sterile…

…decimated global plantations of the Gros Michel banana in the 1950s and ’60s, which had dominated the commercial industry until its downfall. Its replacement, the modern Cavendish, has been threatened with a strain of the disease known as Tropical Race (TR) 4 since the 1990s; in 2019 TR 4 was…