Love them or loathe them, bananas are one of the world’s most popular fruit . But a combination of the climate crisis and new killer diseases have had growers concerned over the banana’s threatened extinction , something that would impose a huge toll on farmers in countries from Guatemala to Malawi, alongside eradicating a staple food.

Now researchers say they have made fresh advances in the race to save them from disaster. This month, Yelloway – a research collaboration between Chiquita, the world’s largest banana company , and the crop-improvement company KeyGene – announced it had developed a fully fertile Cavendish banana, meaning it may be possible, through cross-breeding, to create new banana varieties that are commercially viable and resistant to disease.

Second only to the tomato in terms of fruit consumption globally , the world grows about 139m tonnes of bananas a year .…