Banana Facts

Banana Facts
Banana is one of the oldest cultivated plants. They are native to tropical South and Southeast Asia. That’s where the gene center is and, hence, the greatest genetic diversity of wild banana. Sampling that diversity is crucial for future improvement of the crop.
 
The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant. So bananas don’t grow on trees! The banana pseudo stem grows 6 to 7.6 metres (20 to 24.9 ft) tall, from a corm. Each pseudo stem usually produces a single bunch of bananas. After fruiting, the pseudo stem dies, but shoots – or suckers - develop from the base of the plant and develop into a new pseudostems bearing fruit. The female flowers (which develop into the fruit) appear in rows further up the stem (closer to the leaves) from the rows of male flowers. The ovary is inferior, meaning that the tiny petals and other flower parts appear at the tip of the ovary. The banana fruits develop from the banana heart, in a large hanging bunch, made up of 3-20 hands, with up to 20 fruits (or fingers) per hand and weighs 30–50 kilograms.
 
Banana Facts

 

Source: http://panamadisease.org/en/infofacts

Bananas are grown in more than 150 countries, producing 105 million tonnes of fruit per year. The bananas grown for local consumption are generally grown in traditional, extensive systems. Dessert bananas account for 43 million tonnes per year and are of huge economic importance for many countries in the South. Cooking bananas (plantains and others) account for 45 million tonnes. Locally consumed bananas, which are a staple food in many tropical countries, play a major role in terms of food security.

It is believed that the earliest written reference to banana is in Sanskrit and dates back to around 500 BC. Bananas are suspected to be the first fruit in the earth by some horticulturists. Their origin is placed in Southeast Asia, in the jungles of Malaysia, Indonesia or Philippines, where many varieties of wild bananas still grow today. Africans are credited to have given the present name, since the word banana would be derived from the Arab for ‘finger’. They started to be traded internationally by the end of fourteenth century. The development of railroads and technological advances in refrigerated maritime transport subsequently enabled bananas to become the most important world traded fruit.

 

Source: http://www.bananalink.org.uk/all-about-bananas

 

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admin

Post date: 

Abr 2017

Last modified: 

Abr 2017