Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Commercial fruit is propagated from cuttings, so every plant is identical. The figure is taken from Food and Agriculture Organization, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a food fact?

Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

What else can I read about it?

The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Supermarket bananas are all genetic clones

Commercial fruit is propagated from cuttings, so every plant is identical The Cavendish banana, which dominates world trade, is grown from suckers rather than seeds, so all plants are clones of one another. That uniformity makes the crop vulnerable: an earlier export variety, Gros Michel, was nearly wiped out by Panama disease in the mid twentieth century. The same fungal threat now affects Cavendish plantations. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Food and Agriculture Organization

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: banana, clones, plant-disease

Supermarket bananas are all genetic clones: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Commercial fruit is propagated from cuttings, so every plant is identical. The figure is taken from Food and Agriculture Organization, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a food fact?: Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.