Plantains and Bananas

What is a banana? :

Is it a fruit, an herb or fruit? Well, bananas are all these things. Bananas are the most confusing element that I have ever met in production. What is so confusing, you ask? The confusion is related to the definition of 'Banana'. The banana tree itself is an herb. The best definition of herbs, as far as I know, is this: Herb is a blooming plant with fleshy rather than woody stems, which usually die back in end of each growing season. The Banana tree trunk is a false stem formed by densely packed leaf sheaths. The Banana themselves from the berry family. The berries are a simple fruit with a skin that surrounds one or more seeds in a fleshy pulp. If we cut a banana in the longitudinal direction, in the middle, you will notice tiny black 'seeds'. So, banana is a fruit, herbs and berries.

Where was Bananas discovered and by whom? :

Bananas were discovered by Alexander the Great in India. They were brought to America in 1830 from Central America.

The most common fruits in the world? :

Bananas (Musa sapiebtum), together with its relative the plantain (Musa paradisiaca), is the most common fruits in the world. It is also the fifth most important agricultural commodities in international trade that comes after cereals, sugar, coffee and cocoa.

Bananas (Musa) :

That the highly perishable fruit of an exotic tropical plant should be one of the most inexpensive, everyday food in North America is a miracle of some sort. It is a miracle made possible by complex business organization, large parts of tropical countries, many workers, refrigerated ships and fast communication.

Long before that everything fell into place, it was banana growing wild in the tropics of Asia, possibly Malaysia. One source gives banana a huge country stretching from India to New Guinea. Before cultivation, the banana was hard and full of seeds, which are the wild bananas today. Some unknown early agriculturalist must have seen promise in the hard fruit and selected the smallest seeded model for future propagation. Over time, seedless sweet bananas increasingly dominated and the resulting tame bananas became a tropical staple. Bananas grow from a rhizome in a tall green plant as tall as a tree, but which contain no woody parts.

Little is known of the plant's earliest trips from home base. Ancient wall inscriptions from Assyria in southwestern Asia goes back almost 7000 years, seems to depict the domesticated banana, but researchers are still uncertain. Archaeological excavations in the Indus Valley show banana was cultivated 6000 years ago. In the 4th BC banana made its first appearance in print of a Hindu holy book called the Ramayana.

Although Alexander the Great and his men encounter bananas in India, they made no attempt to bring them back to the West. The Arabs began growing bananas in parts of Northern Africa and then transported the plants to the Iberian peninsula. Bananas grew well in the south, but with the expulsion of the Moors at the end of 1400, died on banana out of the area and was then "rediscovered" growing in Africa by the Portuguese.

Bananas came to America at the beginning of the 1500s and eventually became a huge success in Central America and parts of South America. In late 1800, Costa Rica was the first "banana republic", it is a country with a single major export crop controlled by a foreign company. Ecuador and Guatemala, soon followed. Bananas are grown systematically by thousands of enterprise workers. The products were shipped in refrigerated vessels-the first in the world, and were available throughout the year.

Today, Colombia and Honduras are also major banana exporters. Hawaii, the only state where bananas are grown commercially, providing only 1% of all the bananas eaten in the U.S.

Plantains and bananas (Musa paradisiaca) :

Bananas - a strange herb and not a fruit at all - originated in India. The Arabs introduced it to the Middle East and northern Egypt in 6 BC, but it must have died out by Alexander the Great, on his all-conquering sweep across the known world, was quite surprised to find such a strange plant that grows in the Indus valley in 327 BC. Pliny the Elder wrote about them in the 1st century, referencing Alexander's discovery, and called them "fruit of the wise" by natives, who are said to live on them alone. Theophrastus and clarifications in the 4th century, says wise men sat in the shade of the plants grew and smart to eat its fruit.

Portuguese explorers were surprised in the 15th century to find them growing on the west coast of Africa. In 1516 did the Spanish missionary Friar Tomas de Berlanga it from the Canary Islands to the new world - it landed in Haiti, but quickly spread to Mexico.

Go the other direction, bananas reached China in 200 AD, mentioned in Yang Fu's Encyclopedia of rare stuff ... and so on, so that Captain James Cook found them growing in Hawaii in the 18th century.

Sweet varieties are eaten out of hand and vary in size and color dramatically. Cooking varieties called plantains are not sweet at all, very solid and starchy

Banana-Maturity Indices :

The degree of filling of the fingers, i.e. disappears waving long change in a cross-section. Bananas are harvested mature-green and ripened upon arrival at destination markets as the fruits ripen on the plant frequently split and have poor texture.

Banana-Quality Indices :

Maturity (the more mature the better quality when ripe), finger length (depending on the intended use and demand for different sizes), free of errors, such as insect damage, physical injuries, scars, and decay.

As bananas ripen their starch converted into sugar (increased sweetness). Other components that affect the flavor comprises acids and volatile compounds.