Banana is the leading fruit grown in the Philippines and a consistent top dollar earner. Its prospects in the domestic and foreign markets continue to increase as consumers for fresh and processed banana is on the rise. While Cavendish constitutes for the bulk of export earnings, the cardava variety which is processed into chips is gaining its market share as the emerging export winner.
Cardava is one of the priority commodities grown in Davao Oriental because of the chips high-performance growth in export, projected at 10% average per year. Its local performance is also registering high, impacted by the campaign on health benefits derived from the chips. The province has an area of 7,652.0 hectares planted to caradava with an average production of 87,425 metric tons per year with an average yield of 15.2 metric tons per hectare/yr.
Cavendish variety on the other hand with 1.16 million metric tons production contributed the largest share of 55.5 percent to the total banana production.
