Bananas

The Cavendish banana was named after William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1878). Although they weren't the first known banana specimens in Europe, in around 1834 Cavendish received a shipment of bananas (from Mauritius) courtesy of the chaplain of Alton Towers (then the seat of the Earls of Shrewsbury). His head gardener and friend, Sir Joseph Paxton, cultivated them in the greenhouses of Chatsworth House.

Chatsworth bananas were shipped off to various places in the Pacific around the 1850s. It is believed that some of them may have ended up in the Canary Islands. In 1888, bananas from the Canary Islands were imported into England by Thomas Fyffe. These bananas are now known to belong to the Dwarf Cavendish cultivar.

Cavendish bananas entered mass commercial production in 1903, but didn't gain prominence until the 1950s, when the dominant Gros Michel variety was attacked by Panama disease. Because they were successfully grown in the same soils as previously-affected Gros Michel plants, many assumed the Cavendish cultivars were more resistant to Panama disease. But in 2008, reports from Sumatra and Malaysia suggested that Panama disease had started attacking Cavendish cultivars. The disease was kept out of the Americas until 2019, when it was discovered on banana farms in the coastal Caribbean region. With no fungicide effective against the disease, the Cavendish may meet the same fate as the Gros Michel.

Development of the Goldfinger variety began in the 1950s, and its aim is to replace the Cavendish. The first big breakthrough came in 1977, with the development of a hybrid that provided a good banana bunch size, and was resistant to both burrowing nematode and Panama disease. The Goldfinger was unveiled in 1994 by Canada's International Development Research Centre. It has caught on in certain markets – notably Australia – but has yet to do so in North America and Europe.