Bananas will need sex if they are to survive into ripe old age, research concludes.

A study retracing the bananas' family tree has found their wild ancestors have rarely crossbred in the last 7,000 years, strengthening calls to diversify the popular crop.

The standard yellow banana currently found on most supermarket shelves are mass cultivated as infertile clones and are therefore genetically identical.

But this makes them particularly susceptible to disease, pests and ecological challenges, writes a team of European and Australian scientists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Co-author Mark Donohue, from the Australian National University in Canberra, said 85 per cent of cultivated bananas are for local consumption.

"This means that any disruption to the supply of bananas will have immediate consequences ... possibly leading to famines," he said.
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