It’s the genetically modified fruit from Australia that could turn East African nations into life-saving banana republics.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researchers have engineered bananas grown in far north Queensland to increase the levels of beta-carotene, which is converted to vitamin A in the body.

The goal, they say, is to stop thousands of children in Uganda and the surrounding countries from going blind and dying from vitamin A deficiency.

And now they’ve successfully bent the banana genome, it’s being tested on humans for the first time.