Consumers may soon be paying triple for their bananas following reports the majority of Australia's crop of the fruit has been wiped out by cyclone Yasi.

Initial assessments in Queensland indicate the massive storm may have wiped out as much 90 per cent of the banana crop and that the industry might take 12 to 18 months to get back up to full production.

As a result, economists believe consumers could be in store for another national shortage and resulting rocketing prices in line with the impact when the state's crop was flattened by cyclone Larry almost five years ago.

Back then banana prices soared as high as $15 a kilogram, against pre-cyclone prices of closer to $2 or $3 a kilo, with the fruit becoming more of an exotic delicacy than the most popular way to stuff a fruitbowl.

Even six months after Cyclone Larry blew through Queensland, many outlets were still charging more than $12 a kilo for bananas with the lack of supply and massive price increases a common grumble among shoppers and a popular discussion topic at barbecues, dinner parties and in the office.

Commonwealth Bank chief economist Michael Blythe said if a large proportion of the banana crop were destroyed this morning, as many now fear, then consumers should prepare for a repeat of skyrocketing prices for the fruit.

"The figures the Australian Bureau of Statistics used back then showed in the June quarter of 2006 there was a 250 per cent rise in the price of bananas due to Cyclone Larry, and what they also said at the time was that [higher] fruit prices overall contributed 0.6 percentage points to inflation - and bananas were most of that," Mr Blythe said.

Compounded costs

This general rise in the cost of staple foods could be compounded by the recent Queensland floods. Earlier this month the Commonwealth Bank predicted a 6 per cent increase in fruit and vegetable prices this year.

"We are beginning to think at the very least we would be looking at a replay of the Cyclone Larry effect and while bananas are only a very small part of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), when there was that kind of huge increase in prices that appeared last time that was enough to add half-a-per cent to the inflation rate," said Mr Blythe.

Other foods could also spike in price this year flowing from the damage wrought on crops by Yasi, with farmers fearing around $500 million worth of the sugarcane crop also lost.

Prices of sugar, a key ingredient used in many popular foods, jumped to a 30-year high overnight, in part because of the expected damage from cyclone Yasi.

Cotton prices also rose to a record as the cyclone added to other issues curtailing production of the key fibre crop.

egreenblat@theage.com.au