BANANAS — UP TO TEN WEEKS

THE average Briton eats 100 bananas a year — which means a lot of imports on a lot of boats.

To obtain maximum shelf-life and ensure they complete the journey in tip- top condition, bananas are harvested before the fruit is mature. Picked green and bullet-hard, they are washed, then packed for transportation to the nearest port.

There, they are put into a state of suspended animation by preventing them producing their natural ripening gas, ethylene.

They are cooled and put in refrigerated transportation at 13c. This allows them to be stored while in transit for up to four weeks (the new storage technique doubles the length of time bananas can be kept to around ten weeks). On arrival, the bananas are ‘ woken up’ for between five and seven days in giant ripening rooms, where the temperature is raised and they are flushed with low concentrations of ethylene gas.

Dangerous in high concentrations, artificially made ethylene is believed to be harmless in the quantities used for the fruit we eat. As this happens, the bananas change from green to yellow — stores decide how ripe they want them (so you can ripen them at home if you want).

You can keep them in the fridge (usually at 4c) for a few days, although green bananas won’t ripen and the skins of yellow ones will blacken because the cold affects the cell wall structure of the tropical fruit.