BANANA AND PLANTAIN - Tropical Fruits - page 185

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B ANANA AND P LANTAIN

Banana is a general term that refers to all wild species, landraces and cultivars
belonging to the family Musaceae , genus Musa (Ortiz, 2008). The commercial
banana is a giant, perennial, herbaceous monocotyledon, propagated
vegetatively; it is important in the humid tropical lowlands, with year-round
fruit production, but it can also grow in certain subtropical areas. The fruit
is served as a dessert (banana) or cooked and eaten as a staple (plantain).
The banana (English) has various names: bananier (French), pisang (Malay,
Indonesian), kluai (Thailand), chuoi (Vietnam), xiang jiao (Chinese).
The most important type of fruit commercially is the dessert banana,
which is eaten fresh and makes up most of the international trade of this
genus. The second most important group is the plantain, which is an
important staple food in many countries in Africa, Latin America and South-
east Asia, where extensive areas are grown mainly for local consumption.
There are also the East African highlands and the Asian cooking bananas, and
fi nally the East African beer bananas. In some cases, the same genomic group
can include varieties used as plantains or as dessert bananas.

BOTANY

The genus Musa has more than 50 species, with some of these species having
numerous subspecies. This diversity has lead to the genus being divided into
three sections from the fi ve traditional sections: Musa (2n = 22, incorporating
Rhodochlamys ), Callimusa (2n = 20, incorporating Australimusa ) and single-
species section Ingentimusa (2n = 28) (Wong et al. , 2002). Among these
sections, there are wild, seeded plants and edible clones, with overlapping
geographical distributions. Ensete , the other genus in the family, ranges from
Asia to Africa, while Musa ranges from Africa through Asia to the Pacifi c
(Reynolds, 1951).