Bananas on sale at the Queen Vic market in December.
The price of bananas has already nearly doubled at some Melbourne supermarkets while at least one has capped how many customers can buy.
Shoppers in Diamond Creek, in Melbourne's north-east, are being limited to buying one kilogram of bananas at the local IGA supermarket.
Store duty manager Ramiz Umit said the shop had yesterday ordered 40 cartons of bananas from market suppliers but was only able to get eight cartons and today was hoping to receive 12 cartons after asking for 30.
Snapped in two ... a banana plantation at Innisfail. Photo: Getty Images
He said bananas remained at only $1.99 a kilo at the store but customers were today being restricted to one kilogram - about four or five bananas.
"Everyone understands they've been good," he said.
It is feared bananas prices could skyrocket to $15 per kilogram with more than 75 per cent of Australia's banana crop wiped out by tropical cyclone Yasi in north Queensland.
Woolworths and Safeway supermarkets today increased the price of bananas from $2.75 per kilogram to $5.98 per kilogram.
Woolworths media relations manager Benedict Brook said the tropical fruit was the singularly most popular item sold in supermarkets.
He said the chain had one week's supply of bananas left but had decided to backpay its north Queensland suppliers at the current market price to help them recover from Cyclone Yasi.
Shoppers in turn would face price rises with the cost jumping from $1.98 in recent months, when there was a glut of bananas, to $2.75 per kilo in the wake of the Queensland floods, to $5.98 from today.
Mr Brook said customers would start noticing banana shortages from next week.
"We're still looking at what damage has been caused on the ground to our suppliers," he said.
"I think the information received is that Innisfail isn't as bad as cyclone Larry but Tully is clearly worse, so we are expecting there to be less bananas in stores from just over a week's time."
Mr Brook said Woolworths had begun sourcing bananas from the Northern Territory as well as north Queensland after Cyclone Larry destroyed banana crops in 2006 but the majority were still grown in the cyclone-affected areas of Innisfail and Tully.
Burwood IGA manager Andrew Dablo said he was surprised that the cost of bananas had already risen at markets and suspected some sellers were profiteering.
"I was a little bit concerned that they went up straight away yesterday morning because they would have had a lot of bananas at the market yesterday," he said.
"I think the price rise straight away was a bit unnecessary."
He said he believed bananas accounted for about 10 per cent of supermarket fruit and vegetable sales.
Mr Dablo said bananas had risen late yesterday to at his store from $2.58 per kilogram to $4.49 but only once the existing stock had sold out at the lower price.
Yarraville IGA manager Hemi Kumar said bananas were now selling for $6.99, up from $3.99 per kilogram.
Coles supermarkets were today selling bananas for $3.98 per kilogram.
Mr Brook said fruits grown in cooler climates such as apples and strawberries would be in plentiful supply as well as some tropical fruits such as pineapples and mangoes.
