Banana (Musa sp.) is the eight most important food crop in the tropics and subtropics and grown in more than 130 coutnries with an annual world production of around 145 million tons. Approximately one third of the global Musa production is from Africa, of which more than 50% is produced in the East African Great Lakes region.

To ensure food security in the future, banana crop improvements such as for desease resistance, improved nutritional quality, higher yields etc. are necessary. Banana breeding is however difficult. Many of the important banana varieties are triploid and seed sterile. This results in low hybrid production and slow rate of breeding. Nowadays it is estimated that the time between choosing the right parents, breeding and distribution of selected hybrieds to farmers takes 17 years. Modern breeding techniques like genomic selection, GWAS and molecular markers are expected to reduce the breeding duration with at least 50%.