A genetically modified banana has been approved for growing on farms for the first time. Regulators in Australia and New Zealand have given the go-ahead to a strain of the Cavendish banana altered to be resistant to a devastating fungal disease that has spread to many countries worldwide.conventional bananas
The first banana to be widely eaten in Western countries was a variety called Gros Michel. But by the 1950s, the spread of aat the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, created the resistant strain of banana, called QCAV-4, by adding a gene from a wild banana. In Australia, quarantine measures are currently limiting the spread of TR4, with only a small number of outbreaks each year. So, for now, there are no plans to grow the QCAV-4 banana on a large scale or to sell it to consumers.