Bananas are the world’s favorite fruit and many nations rely on banana trees to supply their citizens with this delicious food product to save them from famine. Bananas are available in the markets throughout the year and are rich in vitamins, minerals and fiber, and contain only small hollow seeds that are infertile. The ornamental bananas, ‘Musa ensete’ and ‘Musa nana’ are not edible but are in high demand for landscaping.
India is the world’s largest producer of bananas and Alexander the Great found them growing there in 327 BC when he conquered India. Soldiers of Alexander the Great returned to Greece and Persia with bulbs of banana plants, ‘Musa accuminata’, where they were distributed and planted.
Antonius Musa, Augustus Caesar’s personal physician, imported the first banana trees, ‘Musa accuminata’, to Rome from Africa in 63 BC. Later, slaves from Portugal brought bananas to Europe from Africa in the early 15th century. Although the banana is believed to have originated in India (East Asia), it became established in Africa and Europe as a staple food product many centuries ago and was brought to North America by Spanish missionaries.
Those first bananas that people knew in ancient times were not sweet like the bananas we know today, but were cooking bananas or bananas with a starchy taste and composition. The bright yellow bananas we know today were discovered as a mutation of the plantain banana by a Jamaican, Jean Francois Poujot, in the year 1836. He found this hybrid mutation growing on his banana tree plantation with a sweet taste. and a yellow color. instead of green or red, and does not require cooking like the plantain. The rapid establishment of this new exotic fruit was well received around the world and it was massively cultivated for world markets.
Bananas are the world’s best-selling fruit, surpassing both apples and citrus; It is estimated that each American eats 25 pounds of fruit every day. The ‘Cavendish’ banana is the most popular banana in the United States and there are more than 400 banana cultivars available in world markets. The leaves of banana trees are used as wrappers to steam other foods inside, and the banana flower is also edible.
Each banana comes from a flower that ripens in groups of 10 to 20 bananas called “hands” that surround the stem, collectively called a “bunch.” Bananas may require a year to mature after flowering in the field, and then the parent banana plant dies. The plant is restored in the following season with suckers from the mother plant. An original stand of banana trees can grow continuously for 100 years, but they are usually replaced in banana tree plantations after 25 years. Bananas ripen better and develop more sweetness if the bunch is removed from the tree, allowing the fruit to ripen off the tree in a shaded spot to ripen slowly.
The banana tree can grow up to 30 feet tall, and the trunk of the tree grows to a width at the base of more than 1 foot. The trunk of the banana plant is made of overlapping pods and stems with new growth emerging from the center of the trunk. The size of bananas can range from a fruit the size of a soccer ball to one as small as a child’s finger. Some bananas taste sweet, some are starchy, and some ornamentals are full of large seeds and are considered inedible. The color of ripe bananas can vary from green, orange, brown, yellow, or marbled with white stripes.
Most banana trees available today are grown from “mother” bulbs by taking offsets that form shoots. Those can be replanted to multiply and increase a banana plantation. These banana sprouts that form at the base of the ‘mother’ bulb can be shipped around the world to many countries, being almost genetically identical to the original progenitor of the banana plant from 10,000 years ago that mutated and stopped producing seeds and became the first to evolve naturally. hybrid.
Bananas are the world’s most exported fruit, registering sales of 12 billion dollars a year for Chiquita and Dole. These bananas are imported into the United States from companies and plantations that grow bananas in India, South America, and Africa. Many third world countries depend on the production of bananas to feed themselves as a major staple food, where they eat bananas 3 times a day. Bananas are rich in sugars such as sucrose, glucose, and fructose, as well as fiber and special minerals that contain potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and iron. Bananas contain tryptophan, a protein in the body that converts to serotonin, a mood enhancer. They are also high in vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and vitamin C. Doctors say that eating bananas can reduce the risk of sudden stroke by 40%, as published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
