A sucker is a lateral shoot that develops from the rhizome and emerges from the soil usually near the parent plant. It is a form of asexual, or vegetative, reproduction, that makes the banana plant perennial. Suckers emerge and ensure a more or less continuous supply of shoots, each capable of producing an inflorescence. They have been used as planting material since the early days of domestication by severing them from the mat and transplanting them to a new location.

Both wild species of bananas and cultivated bananas produce suckers. The clump of plants formed by the parent plant and its suckers is commonly called a mat. The botanical term for a mat is genet, and for a sucker is ramet.