 Gros Michel bananas were grown on massive plantations in Honduras, Costa Rica, and elsewhere in Central America.This variety was once the dominant export banana to Europe and North America, grown in Central America, but in the 1950s, Panama disease, a wilt caused by the fungus "Fusarium oxysporum f.sp.cubense", wiped out vast tracts of Gros Michel plantations in Central America, though it is still grown on non-infected land throughout the region.