Where do bananas grow? Detailed answer

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Where do bananas grow? Detailed answer

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What do bananas grow on?

There is no such thing as a banana tree.

The banana plant is essentially a giant grass, and bananas are its berries.

According to the definition, a grass is "a plant with a fleshy, but not woody stem, which, after the plant has flowered and produced seeds, dies down to the ground." However, this definition is not always correct: for example, sage, thyme and rosemary have a stem of just a tree type (although not covered with real bark).

Thus, after flowering, that part of the grass that is above the ground dies. In the case of a banana, we are dealing with a very unusual effect. After the death of one stem, a little further along the root, another begins to grow. Thus, after a few years, the plant, as it were, "passes" half a meter-meter.

Banana came to us from Malaysia, where it has been grown for 10 thousand years. Wild bananas, which can still be found in Southeast Asia, contain large, hard seeds and very little pulp. They are pollinated by bats.

Bananas from your supermarket are a cultivar chosen by growers for their fleshy flesh and lack of seeds. Cultivation gave the plant a sweet, tasty, but sterile: such a banana is not able to reproduce without human help.

Most banana plants have not had "sex" for 10 years. Almost every one of the bananas that we eat with such pleasure is propagated by hand: from the shoot of an already existing plant, whose genetic fund has not been updated for 100 centuries. As a result, the banana is extremely susceptible to various kinds of diseases. Many of its species have already fallen victim to fungal infections such as "black sigatoka" and "Panama disease", which are very resistant to fungicides. And if a genetically modified variety is not developed soon, we can forget about bananas forever.

The problem, by the way, is very serious. Bananas are the world's most profitable export crop. The industry is worth $12 billion a year and supports 400 million people, many of whom live below the poverty line.

Most bananas come from hot countries, however, paradoxically, Iceland is the largest European banana producer. Bananas are grown in spacious greenhouses heated by geothermal waters, just two degrees south of the Arctic Circle.

Fyffe's, the multinational importer that buys the entire banana crop in Belize every year, is Irish.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

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