Cavendish

Cavendish is the dominant banana of global commerce, the type found in nearly every supermarket worldwide. It rose to prominence in the mid-twentieth century when Panama disease wiped out the previously dominant Gros Michel, and its resistance to that older strain made it the industry's replacement. Cavendish plants are relatively compact for a banana, and they produce large bunches of sweet, seedless dessert fruit with thin skin that ripens from green to bright yellow. Grown as a cloned monoculture, it is now threatened by a new strain of Panama disease known as Tropical Race 4. For home growers in frost-free climates, Cavendish offers familiar, reliable sweet bananas on a manageable-sized plant that fruits within a year or two.