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Banana: Musa Species Are Native To Tropical

A banana is a curved fruit that grows in clusters at the top of banana plants. Most modern edible bananas come from two wild species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. Bananas are grown in 135 countries and are primarily produced for their fruit, though other parts of the plant also have uses.

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Mabel Yung
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49 views1 page

Banana: Musa Species Are Native To Tropical

A banana is a curved fruit that grows in clusters at the top of banana plants. Most modern edible bananas come from two wild species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. Bananas are grown in 135 countries and are primarily produced for their fruit, though other parts of the plant also have uses.

Uploaded by

Mabel Yung
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Banana

A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry[1][2] – produced by several


kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa.[3] In some
countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguishing them
from dessert bananas. The fruit is variable in size, color, and firmness, but is usually
elongated and curved, with soft flesh rich in starch covered with a rind, which may be
green, yellow, red, purple, or brown when ripe. The fruits grow upward in clusters near
the top of the plant. Almost all modern edible seedless (parthenocarp) bananas come
from two wild species – Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The scientific names of
most cultivated bananas are Musa acuminata, Musa balbisiana, and Musa × 
paradisiaca for the hybrid Musa acuminata × M. balbisiana, depending on
their genomic constitution. The old scientific name for this hybrid, Musa sapientum, is no
longer used.
Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been
first domesticated in Papua New Guinea.[4][5] They are grown in 135 countries,
[6] primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make fiber, banana wine, and banana
beer and as ornamental plants. The world's largest producers of bananas in 2017 were
India and China, which together accounted for approximately 38% of total production.[7]
Worldwide, there is no sharp distinction between "bananas" and "plantains". Especially in
the Americas and Europe, "banana" usually refers to soft, sweet, dessert bananas,
particularly those of the Cavendish group, which are the main exports from banana-
growing countries. By contrast, Musa cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called
"plantains". In other regions, such as Southeast Asia, many more kinds of banana are
grown and eaten, so the binary distinction is not as useful and is not made in local
languages.
The term "banana" is also used as the common name for the plants that produce the
fruit.[3] This can extend to other members of the genus Musa, such as the scarlet
banana (Musa coccinea), the pink banana (Musa velutina), and the Fe'i bananas. It can
also refer to members of the genus Ensete, such as the snow banana (Ensete glaucum)
and the economically important false banana (Ensete ventricosum). Both genera are in
the banana family, Musaceae.

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