Semillas del árbol de banana

Wild banana species produce numerous large, hard banana tree seeds, but such bananas are unusual in the banana trade. Regardless of whether you purchase desert bananas (the sweet, yellow bananas that are only eaten when fully ripe) or plantains (also known as cooking bananas) they will most likely be completely free of any banana tree seed.

Bananas grown for human consumption are normally sterile cultivars that can only be propagated asexually. They are parthenocarpic as a result of having one diploid and one tetraploid parent and banana tree seed production is therefore impossible for them. If you want to propagate this type of banana cultivar, you can instead remove and transplant a part of its corm (i.e. the underground stem. Most banana growers do this by carefully removing one of the vertical shoots that develops from the base of the pseudostem – a so called “sucker”. If you manage to remove a sucker with some roots intact, it will eventually turn into a new plant with the exact same genetic combination as the old plant. If you want to be able to plant bananas far away from the mother plant, the used of small sympodial corms are a better solution since such corms require hardly any care. They can for instance be packed in a box and stored for several weeks. A third method popular among professional banana growers is propagation by means of tissue culture. This propagation method ensures a disease-free planting material, including the dreaded Panama wilt disease.

One example of a banana species that produce a lot of banana seeds is Musa balbisiana, one of the assumed forerunners of the common domesticated bananas. Musa balbisiana can still be purchased in markets in Indonesia so if you ever visit this country, you will have a chance to try a banana filled with banana tree seed. As archeological evidence has told us, bananas have been cultivated since prehistoric times and the first banana growers most likely lived in South East Asia. The first literary mentioned of bananas that has survived into our time is found in a Buddhist text from the year 600 BC. In 327 BC, Alexander the Great tries bananas for the first time as he arrives to India, and we know that organized banana plantations could be found in China as early as 200 AD. In 650 AD, bananas were brought back to Palestine by Islamic vanquishers and Arabic merchants soon spread the fruits over a vast region. Columbus made his first journey to would-be America in 1492 and no more than 10 years later, the first banana plantation was established in the Caribbean by the Portuguese.

The fact that domesticated bananas yields no banana tree seed might seem weird, but the trait is shared by many other domesticated fruits. You can for instance purchase seedless (seed-free) oranges, lemons, limes, grapes and watermelons. What these fruits have in common is that their wild ancestors produce relatively large and hard seeds that are distributed throughout a major part of the fruit (unlike for instance the apple where all the seeds are confined to the centre). This makes the seeds a nuisance for many consumers and promotes the development of seedless fruits, e.g. bananas incapable of banana tree seed production.