Bananas are ticking time bombs. One moment, they’re yellow, velvety, and tender; the next, they’re a brown, mushy, goopy mess. But not every forgotten bunch is destined for a loaf of banana bread. There are ways to slow the clock.To extend a banana’s shelf life, you’ll want to control the release of ethylene gas — the ripening hormone you can blame for a banana’s speedy demise. (That gas is the reason people recommend adding a banana to a paper bag to ripen other fruit, like avocados and mangoes, more quickly.)The issue is that bananas run on a positive feedback loop: As they ripen, bananas produce gas. The more gas there is, the quicker they ripen, and so on. So when one banana starts to go, the rest of the bunch will quickly follow suit.“Dealing with ethylene and bananas is an enormous problem,” James Giovannoni, a plant molecular biologist at the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University, explained in a video interview. “Once bananas are going yellow, they’re producing a lot [of ethylene gas], and you’re out of the gate,” he said.But Giovannoni said the good news is that storing bananas properly can help keep this silent assassin at bay.Here’s everything you need to know about prolonging a banana’s golden era for as long as possible. Plus, we discuss a few tools for stashing bananas in your kitchen.