Agriculture needed a trouble-shooter to straighten out the Island's crop, they knew just who to call.

Mr. Lessard, 60, is an international banana consultant and world authority on his favourite fruit. Back home near Miami, he has 53 varieties of the plant growing on an eight-acre farm, and what he doesn't know about bananas could be written on the smallest Bermudian specimen -- with room to spare.

"It's such a useful plant,'' he said yesterday. "It's one that I've just always felt an affinity with. I never feel more at home than when I'm in a banana plantation.'' Mr. Lessard is in Bermuda this week at the invitation of Government agricultural officer Mr. Stewart Swanson, who is hoping to make Bermuda as self-sufficient in bananas as possible.

"Hurricane Emily knocked down a lot of banana trees and a lot of them weren't replanted,'' Mr. Swanson explained. "Looking in our records prior to Emily I noticed we would run embargoes on imported bananas for up to 26 weeks at a time.

"After Emily we had embargoes of two, four or six weeks, and we haven't had one so far this year. This means we're importing a lot of bananas and before, that money was going into farmers' pockets. We decided to try to influence the farmers to grow more bananas and take some of this market away from the imported ones.'' So they called in the banana man.

Mr. Lessard got involved in bananas first as a hobby. "I just went along with the wind,'' he said. "I was already interested in bananas, and when I was doing survival courses with the air force I spent time in the Philippines living with natives. I was interested in how useful they found the banana plant -- most of it can be eaten or used. I grew a plant at home and just continued to expand.'' Bermuda's bananas are mainly the Dwarf Cavendish variety, named after a British explorer who collected specimens from their native South China hundreds of years ago. He took them to England, from where they were introduced to the Canary Islands. Mr. Lessard believes Portuguese sailors probably brought them to Bermuda.

The Dwarf Cavendish has served the Island well, but Mr. Swanson and Mr.

Lessard believe other varieties, most likely the Gran Nain, could do better.

The Gran Nain is less at risk from fungi, and several growers have already agreed to try it out next spring.

"Bermudians have got used to the imported banana in the last eight or nine years,'' said Mr. Swanson. "The Gran Nain is about the same size as the imported ones, so not only would consumers have the choice of buying a larger banana, they would know their dollars are staying here.'' If trials are a success, Bermuda-grown Gran Nains could be in the stores by April, 1994.

Another scheme could be to encourage farmers to grow exotic gourmet varieties for hotels and restaurants. Bermuda already has the fig banana, and Mr.

Lessard knows of plenty more -- including red bananas, blue-green tart-tasting bananas, finger-sized bananas and bananas two feet long, called the African rhino horn.

"It takes two people to eat one of those,'' said Mr. Lessard, not quite smacking his lips. "And they have to be hungry.' TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF -- US banana expert Bill Lessard, pictured (left) with agricultural officer Stewart Swanson, is helping the Island's farmers revive local production.