The harvesting of bananas for export is constrained by the need to transport the production by sea to the importing country, which takes 10-20 days from the West Indies to Europe. The fruit must arrive before the start of the climacteric rise. The fruit must therefore be harvested early enough to have a green life (GL, time elapse, in degree-days, between cutting the fruit and the climacteric rise) longer than the transport time. Our aim is to find an indicator of harvesting date which would give rise to a constant GL at harvest. For this purpose, it was assumed that GL depends on fruit maturity and thus on its developmental stage at harvest. Several indicators of development were considered: - the fruit age expressed in degree-days (dd, base temperature 14°C) accumulated since inflorescence emergence, - the relation between GL and pulp organic acid content.