Yelloway One is first variety to emerge from Chiquita’s joint venture research project with KeyGene, MusaRadix and WUR
A project led by multinational fruit company Chiquita has officially unveiled Yelloway One, its first hybrid, edible banana that offers resistance to fungal diseases Fusarium Wilt, caused by Fusarium Tropical Race 4 (TR4), and Black Leaf Streak Disease, also known as Black Sigatoka.
Cavendish, by far the world’s most commonly sold variety, remains highly susceptible to both diseases, which are widely acknowledged to pose the biggest threat to the global banana industry, and each year cost hundreds of millions of dollars to control.
Yelloway One is the first prototype to be developed by the Yelloway breeding programme, a joint venture founded in 2020 that brings together Chiquita, gene editing specialist KeyGene, and biotech startup MusaRadix, with support from Wageningen University & Research (WUR).
It was developed by a team of scientists led by KeyGene’s Fernando García-Bastidas, using highly advanced, data-driven breeding techniques.
“This marks a crucial milestone for Yelloway,” said a spokesperson for the project. “It demonstrates that banana varieties resistant to TR4 and Black Sigatoka can be developed through crossbreeding – something the industry has long anticipated.”
The new variety, a triploid clone, is also hugely significant as the first of what is expected to be a new generation of non-genetically modified, crossbred bananas.
“With these new varieties, Yelloway aims to support the global banana industry in tackling these diseases while contributing to more sustainable cultivation practices,” the spokesperson added. “Yelloway One is now on the verge of flowering and bearing fruit for the first time in the greenhouse.”
With Cavendish production becoming harder and more costly to sustain around the world as a result of that variety’s susceptibility to fungal diseases Fusarium Tropical Race 4 (TR4) and Black Sigatoka, the expectation is that Yelloway One and others that follow will help bring export banana production into a new era.
At Fruit Logistica 2024 in Berlin, Chiquita revealed that it now spends around €90m per year on disease prevention to ensure its banana production remain sustainable.
New and more resilient varieties like Yelloway One, which is said to be fully resistant to TR4 and partially resistant to Black Sigatoka, offer a way to reduce that dependency in future.
