Banana

For other uses, see Banana (disambiguation).

A banana is a long, curved fruit that grows on large, treelike flowering plants of the genus Musa. Botanically, it is a berry. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, which sets them apart from dessert bananas. Bananas come in many sizes, colors, and firmness levels. Most have soft, starchy flesh under a peel that can change color as the fruit ripens. The fruit grows upward in clusters near the top of the plant. Almost all modern bananas that have no seeds (parthenocarp) come from two wild species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, or from their hybrids.

Musa plants first grew in warm, tropical areas of Indomalaya and Australia. People probably first farmed them in New Guinea. Bananas are grown in 135 countries, mostly for their fruit. Some are also used to make banana paper and textiles. Some banana plants are grown just to be looked at, as ornamental plants. In 2022, the biggest banana producers in the world were India and China. Bananas can be eaten raw or cooked in many ways. People make them into curries, banana chips, fritters, and fruit preserves, or simply bake or steam them.

The word "banana" is also used for other members of the Musa genus. These include the scarlet banana (Musa coccinea), the pink banana (Musa velutina), and the Fe'i bananas. Some plants from the genus Ensete are sometimes included too. These include the snow banana (Ensete glaucum) and the false banana (Ensete ventricosum), which is important to people in Africa. Both genera belong to the banana family, Musaceae.

Banana plantations can be harmed by tiny worms called nematodes, by insects, and by fungal and bacterial diseases. One of the most serious is Panama disease, which is caused by a Fusarium fungus. This disease and black sigatoka threaten the Cavendish bananas that are the main kind eaten in the Western world. These plants have three sets of chromosomes (triploid) and are a type of Musa acuminata. Plant breeders are looking for new kinds of bananas. This is hard, because the bananas sold in stores have no seeds. To help with future breeding, banana germplasm is stored in many gene banks around the world.

Description

The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant. All of its above-ground parts grow from a corm. It looks like a tree, but its trunk is really a pseudostem made of many leaf-stalks (petioles). Bananas grow well in soil that is at least 60 centimetres deep, drains well, and is not packed hard. The plants grow quickly. Each leaf has a stalk and a wide blade (lamina). Most cultivated plants are about 5 metres tall. Some, like 'Dwarf Cavendish', are about 3 metres tall, while others, like 'Gros Michel', can be 7 metres or more. Leaves can grow up to 2.7 metres long.

When a plant is mature, it forms a flower spike called an inflorescence. It grows up through the pseudostem. Each pseudostem makes one, known as the "banana heart". After fruiting, the pseudostem dies, but new shoots usually grow from the base, so the plant is perennial. The inflorescence has bracts between rows of flowers. The female flowers, which can become fruit, grow above the male flowers. The ovary is inferior, so the small petals and other flower parts sit at its tip. The fruits hang in a large bunch of about nine "hands", with up to 20 fruits on each hand. A bunch can weigh 22–65 kilograms. The stalk end of each fruit connects to the rachis, and the opposite end is the blossom end. The fruit is a "leathery berry" with a peel that is usually thrown away. Long, thin strands (vascular bundles) run through the peel. The soft white flesh inside is the part that is eaten. The yellow dessert variety can be split into three sections that match the carpels. Cultivated varieties usually have no fertile seeds.

Evolution

Further information: List of banana cultivars

A 2011 phylogeny study used nuclear genes to show how some members of the Musaceae family are related. Many cultivated bananas are mixes of Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. A 2024 study by Li and colleagues found that three subspecies of Musa acuminata played a large part in the main groups of cultivated triploid bananas. The genus Musa was named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. Its name may come from Antonius Musa, a doctor to the Emperor Augustus, or from an Arabic word for banana. The word "banana" is thought to come from West Africa, possibly from the Wolof word banaana.

Sorting cultivated bananas into groups has been hard for scientists for a long time. Linnaeus first placed them into two species, based only on how people used them as food. Later, Ernest Cheesman showed that these were cultivars that came from two wild species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. In 1955, Norman Simmonds and Ken Shepherd proposed a naming system based on the banana's genome. In places such as North America and Europe, small sweet bananas are eaten raw as dessert, and large starchy plantains are cooked. This difference does not hold in Southeast Asia, where many bananas are eaten both raw and cooked. Fe'i bananas, grown on Pacific islands, come from a different wild species.

History

See also: Musa acuminata, Domesticated plants and animals of Austronesia, and East African Highland bananas

Bananas were first grown in New Guinea from plants without seeds, taken from Musa banksii. Papuans grew them before Austronesian-speakers arrived. Over time, people changed wild bananas into cultivated ones. This process was complete by the early to middle of the Holocene. From New Guinea, bananas spread west into Island Southeast Asia, where they mixed with other subspecies to make the bananas we grow today. Austronesian peoples carried them on ancient seaborne migrations and ancient maritime trading routes to Oceania, Africa, South Asia, and Indochina. Bananas may have reached Africa through the Austronesian settlement of Madagascar, but scientists are still not sure of this.

Further information: Arab Agricultural Revolution

Bananas spread widely through Islamic lands after the spread of Islam. They are mentioned in writings from the 9th century onward. From there, they moved into North Africa and Al-Andalus during the Arab Agricultural Revolution. In 1458, the Italian traveller Gabriele Capodilista wrote about banana farms near Limassol. In the early modern period, European explorers first saw bananas during the Magellan expedition in 1521, in Guam and the Philippines. The ship's historian Antonio Pigafetta called them "figs more than one palm long."^{: 130, 132} Bananas later reached South America and, through the Manila galleons, North and Central America.

Further information: Columbian exchange

Further information: History of modern banana plantations in the Americas

The first modern banana farms started in Jamaica and the Western Caribbean Zone, including most of Central America. In the 1870s, North American shippers Lorenzo Dow Baker and Andrew Preston started the Boston Fruit Company, with help from railroad builder Minor C. Keith. Later, large companies such as Chiquita and Dole grew big and powerful. Their political influence gave us the term banana republic for countries such as Honduras and Guatemala.

Further information: History of peasant banana production in the Americas

Today, most of the world's bananas are grown for families or local markets. Many small farmers in Asia and Africa sell at least some of their crop. In many tropical countries, green (unripe) bananas are used for cooking. Because bananas and plantains produce fruit all year, they help feed people during the hunger season between other harvests. They are also important for global food security.

Modern cultivation

See also: List of banana cultivars

Main article: Cavendish banana

Bananas are grown from offshoots of the plant, a process that is asexual. Each plant makes two shoots at a time. The bigger shoot fruits right away. The smaller "sucker" fruits in 6 to 8 months. Bananas do not depend on the season, so fresh bananas can be found all year. They are grown in about 135 countries.

In 2009, most of the bananas sold around the world were from the Cavendish group. These are a AAA group type of Musa acuminata with three sets of chromosomes. Disease is a serious threat to Cavendish bananas everywhere. It is not clear whether any other type can take their place. Scientists are working on hybridisation and genetic engineering to create a banana that resists the disease. One new strain is the Taiwanese Cavendish, also called Formosana.

Bananas sent to other countries are picked while still green. They are then ripened in closed rooms filled with ethylene gas. This gas works like the fruit's own natural signal to ripen. Ethylene helps make amylase, an enzyme that changes starch into sugar. It also helps make pectinase, an enzyme that softens the banana by breaking down the pectin between its cells.

Bananas travel from warm, tropical places to markets around the world before they are fully ripe. They are kept cool and can be stored for 3 to 4 weeks at 13 °C (55 °F). When they arrive, a small amount of ethylene is added. They begin to ripen a few days later. Banana farming also affects the environment. Too much fertilizer can lead to eutrophication, which harms life in streams and lakes. Growing more banana farms has also led to forests being cut down and soil being washed away. Voluntary sustainability standards, such as Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade, are helping to solve some of these problems. By 2016, certified bananas made up 36% of banana exports.

Breeding

Edible bananas are parthenocarpic, which means they have no seeds. This makes them good to eat, but it also makes them hard to breed. Most cultivated bananas are triploid, though some are diploid and a few are tetraploid. Most come from the wild diploid species M. acuminata and M. balbisiana, and some come from M. acuminata alone. Because of unpaired chromosomes, homoeologous recombination, and plants that cannot make working reproductive parts, seeds are very rare when people try to breed bananas. Since the 1920s, "pedigree breeding" has been used to try to create useful hybrids. More recently, the "reproductive breeding" method uses colchicine on diploid plants to produce tetraploid offspring.

Mutation breeding can also be used with this crop. Aneuploidy is a major source of variation in allotriploid varieties and can help with TR4 resistance. Lab protocols have been created to check for these changes and for possible disease resistance. Wild Musa spp. provide useful resistance genes and are vital for breeding TR4 resistance, as shown by introgressed resistance from wild relatives. The Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research has bred a seedless banana that resists both Panama disease and black Sigatoka disease. The team found about 15 seeds among roughly 30,000 cultivated plants. They pollinated these by hand with pollen from wild Asian bananas.

Production

As of 2018, bananas were sold to other countries in greater amounts, and for more money, than any other fruit. In 2022, the world grew 179 million tonnes of bananas and plantains together. India and China grew the most, together making up 26% of the world total. Other large producers were Uganda, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nigeria, and Ecuador.

In 2013, the world sent out 20 million tonnes of bananas and 859,000 tonnes of plantains to other countries. Ecuador and the Philippines sent the most bananas, with 5.4 and 3.3 million tonnes. The Dominican Republic sent the most plantains, with 210,350 tonnes.

Ecology

Climate change affects banana growing in many ways. It changes temperature, water stress, location, sunlight, pests and disease, and carbon dioxide. From 1961 to 2016, climate change overall helped banana harvests because temperatures rose. However, these benefits are slowing down. Bananas need more water, and it is harder to grow companion crops like coffee alongside them.

Climate change affects different places in different ways. Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama, and Malaysia are considered "at-risk," and their banana harvests are expected to fall. African countries, Honduras, and Ecuador are expected to benefit. As climate zones change, more bananas may be grown in places like Nepal, where other crops such as coffee are having a hard time.

Some diseases have spread because of climate change. Black Sigatoka moved from Honduras to Brazil, the Caribbean, and Florida. Wetter canopies may make infection more likely in Latin America and the Caribbean. Flooding harms banana plants. The irrigation systems needed to fight drought can also put pressure on fresh water. Farmers often have few resources for drought management.

There are ways to reduce the harm. Farmers can grow types that handle climate change better, use integrated pest management, care for soil nutrients, and use agroforestry systems. Small farmers also need fair prices, and cooperatives can help with this.

Pests

Bananas are harmed by many pests, especially nematodes and insects.

Nematodes

Banana roots can be damaged by several kinds of tiny worms called nematodes. Radopholus similis causes nematode root rot, which is the most serious nematode problem for bananas. Other nematodes cause different kinds of root damage: Meloidogyne causes root-knot, Pratylenchus causes root-lesion, and Helicotylenchus causes spiral nematode root damage.

Insects

Two beetles are among the main insect pests of banana crops and can cause big losses for farmers: the banana borer Cosmopolites sordidus and the banana stem weevil Odoiporus longicollis. Other important pests include aphids and scarring beetles.

Diseases

Main article: List of banana and plantain diseases

Bananas are not in danger of dying out completely. However, the Cavendish group, which is the most common banana sold around the world, is under threat. Experts say we need to protect banana biodiversity by growing many new kinds, not just the Cavendish. Its predecessor, the 'Gros Michel', was also widely grown. It had to be replaced after many plants were infected with Panama disease. Growing only one kind over large areas, called monocropping, leaves Cavendish open to disease. Some people say the replacement bananas are so different that most would not think of them as the same fruit. They blame this decline on monogenetic growing, which is driven by short-term business goals. Fungal diseases are especially serious for small island developing states.

Panama disease is caused by a Fusarium soil fungus. It enters through the roots and blocks the flow of water with gels and gums. This makes the plant wilt. Cavendish was chosen to replace Gros Michel because it produces the best fruit among the kinds that resist this disease. However, it needs more care during shipping. A stronger form, Fusarium wilt TR4, was found in 1993. It has destroyed Cavendish plantations in several countries in southeast Asia and has spread to Australia and India. The only known defense is genetic resistance. This may come from RGA2, a gene from a diploid banana, or from Ced9, which comes from a nematode. Scientists may achieve this through genetic modification.

Black sigatoka is a leaf spot disease caused by an ascomycete fungus, Mycosphaerella fijiensis. It was first seen in Fiji in 1963 or 1964. The disease blackens parts of the leaves, which blocks photosynthesis. Because of this, fruit production can fall by 50% or more, and the bananas that do grow may ripen too early. Farmers may need to spray up to 50 times a year, so better methods using integrated pest management are needed.

Banana bunchy top virus is spread by the banana aphid Pentalonia nigronervosa. Infected leaves become short and bunched at the top of the plant. There is no cure, so diseased plants must be removed.

Banana bacterial wilt is caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum. It was first identified in Ethiopia in the 1960s, where it affected Ensete ventricosum, a close relative of bananas. It was first seen in Uganda in 2001. It has since been found in several countries in Central and East Africa.

Conservation of genetic diversity

Bananas have a small range of genetic diversity. They face many threats from pests, diseases, and abiotic problems such as drought. Because of this, scientists work to protect banana genetic resources. In 2024, the economist Pascal Liu of the FAO said that global warming is an "enormous threat" to the world's supply of bananas.

Banana germplasm is kept in many gene banks in countries and regions around the world. The largest banana collection in the world, the International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre, is run by Bioversity International and based at KU Leuven in Belgium. Most banana plants do not have seeds, so they are kept in three main ways. They can be grown in vivo in fields. They can be grown in vitro as tiny plants in test tubes. They can also be kept by cryopreservation, where meristems are stored in liquid nitrogen at −196 °C. Genes from wild species are kept as DNA and frozen pollen. Bananas and their crop wild relatives are also protected in situ, in the wild places where they grow. Farmers help too, by growing traditional local types of banana.

Nutrition

A raw banana, without the peel, is about 75% water and 23% carbohydrates. It has 1% protein and almost no fat. A 100-gram (3.5 oz) serving gives 89 calories. It also gives 24% of the Daily Value of vitamin B₆. Bananas have some vitamin C, manganese, potassium, and dietary fiber. They do not have many other micronutrients.

Many people think bananas have a lot of potassium. A typical serving has 12% of the Daily Value for potassium. Compared with other fruits, vegetables, legumes, and many other foods, bananas have a medium amount of potassium.

Uses

Bananas are an important starch food for many people in tropical countries. Depending on the type and how ripe they are, the flesh can taste starchy or sweet, and it can feel firm or soft. People can eat both the skin and the inside, raw or cooked. Most of the smell of a fresh banana comes from isoamyl acetate, also called banana oil. Together with isobutyl acetate, it helps give bananas their flavor. Plantains are often cooked as fritters, such as pisang goreng in Southeast Asia. Bananas are also part of Philippine cuisine, including maruya. People make bananas into jams, banana chips (such as in Kerala), and banana flour. In Africa, matoke bananas are cooked in a sauce to make the breakfast dish katogo. In Western countries, they are used in desserts like banana bread.

See also: Cooking plantain and List of banana dishes

Banana flowers, also called "banana hearts" or "banana blossoms", are used as a vegetable in South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine. They taste a little like artichoke. People can eat the fleshy part of the bracts and the heart.

Banana leaves are large, bendy, and waterproof. They are usually too tough to eat. In South Asia and several Southeast Asian countries, they are often used as eco-friendly food containers or "plates." In Indonesian cuisine, they are used in cooking methods like pepes and botok. In Malaysia, they wrap nasi lemak. In South India, traditional food is often served on a banana leaf. In Tamil Nadu (India), dried leaves are used to pack food and make cups.

The soft core of the banana plant's trunk is also eaten in South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine. It is used in dishes such as the Burmese mohinga and the Filipino inubaran and kadyos, manok, kag ubad.

Fibers from the stems and leaves of the abacá banana (Musa textilis) and other bananas have been used for textiles in the Philippines since ancient times. Abacá fiber is still the main material for traditional cloth woven by various ethnic groups of the Philippines. Examples include the t'nalak made by the Tiboli of South Cotabato and the dagmay made by the Bagobo people. The oldest surviving banana-fiber cloth, the Banton Burial Cloth, was found in Banton, Romblon. It dates to around the 13th and 14th centuries. During the Spanish colonial period, abacá cloth was also used for canvas sails, cordage, ropes, and Manila paper. By the 19th century, abacá fiber had become one of the Philippines' most important exports because it is strong and resists saltwater. Banana cloth also has a long history in southern China and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, where fine fibers are used for kimono. Banana paper can be made from the bark of the plant or from fibers of the stem.

Banana leaves are also used as umbrellas, and leftover bananas can be fed to livestock. Banana peel may help remove heavy metal contamination from river water. Bananas contain potassium-40, a natural source of very low radioactivity. The banana equivalent dose was created in 1995 as a simple teaching tool. People with a latex allergy may react to handling or eating bananas.

Cultural roles

The Edo period poet Matsuo Bashō took his name from the Japanese word 芭蕉 (Bashō), which means the Japanese banana. A Bashō plant that a thankful student gave him grew in his garden. It inspired his poems and became a symbol of his life and home. The song "Yes! We Have No Bananas", written by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn, came out in 1923. For many decades it was the best-selling sheet music ever. Someone slipping on a banana peel has been a funny moment in physical comedy for many years. Artists have also used bananas in their work. The cover of the 1967 debut album of The Velvet Underground shows a banana made by Andy Warhol. In 2019, an exhibition by Natalia LL at the National Museum in Warsaw was taken down, and the museum's director was told off.

In India, bananas are an important part of many festivals and special occasions for Hindus. At South Indian weddings, especially Tamil weddings, banana trees are tied in pairs to make an arch. This is a blessing for a long and useful life. In Thailand, people believe a certain type of banana plant is home to a spirit, Nang Tani. In Malay folklore, the ghost Pontianak is linked to banana plants.

See also: List of ethnic slurs § Banana, and Racism in sport

In some sports in Europe, Britain, and Australia, people have thrown bananas at players from the other team to be very unkind. This was a hurtful form of racial abuse aimed at players of Black African ancestry. It happened often in England in the 1980s.