Jump to content

blogs_blog_76

  • entries
    405
  • comments
    7,595
  • views
    97,670

18 Comments


Recommended Comments

Banana is the common name used for herbaceous, cultigenic plants in the genus Musa, and is also the name given the fruit of these plants.

 

Banana plants are of the family Musaceae. They are cultivated primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent for the production of fibre and as ornamental plants. They are native to tropical southeastern Asia but are widely cultivated in tropical regions. Because of their size and structure banana plants are often mistaken for trees. The main or upright growth is called a pseudostem, which when mature, for some species can obtain a height of up to 2–8 m, with leaves of up to 3.5 m in length. Each pseudostem produces a single bunch of bananas, before dying and being replaced by a new pseudostem. The base of the plant is a rhizome (known as a corm). Corms are perennial, with a productive lifespan of 15 years or more. The fruit of these plants (also called bananas) are, technically, a false berry, but are almost exclusively referred to as fruit in popular usage.

 

The banana fruit grow in hanging clusters, with up to 20 fruit to a tier (called a hand), and 3-20 tiers to a bunch. The total of the hanging clusters is known as a bunch, or commercially as a "banana stem", and can weigh from 30–50 kg. The fruit averages 125 g, of which approximately 75% is water and 25% dry matter content. Each individual fruit (or 'finger', or in common usage 'banana') has a protective outer layer (a peel or skin) with a fleshy edible inner portion. Typically the fruit has numerous strings (called 'phloem bundles') which run between the skin and the edible portion of the banana, and which are comonly removed individually after the skin is removed. Bananas are a valuable source of Vitamin A, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, and potassium.

 

Globally, bananas rank fourth after rice, wheat and maize in human consumption; they are grown in 132 countries worldwide, more than any other fruit crop. In popular culture and commerce, "banana" usually refers to soft, sweet "dessert" bananas that are usually eaten raw. The bananas from a group of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are generally used in cooking rather than eaten raw. Bananas may also be dried and ground into banana flour.

 

Although the wild species have fruits with numerous large, hard seeds, virtually all culinary bananas have seedless fruits. Bananas are classified either as dessert bananas (meaning they are yellow and fully ripe when eaten) or as green cooking bananas. Almost all export bananas are of the dessert types; however, only about 10-15% of all production is for export, with the U.S. and EU being the dominant buyers.

Link to comment
Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...