Banana Tree Plant
The banana tree plant is grown as a staple food crop in tropical regions all over the world and bananas are an especially important source of nutrients for sustenance farmers and poor workers in third world countries. Just like the inhabitants of temperate regions tend to use potatoes for a wide range of different dishes, people living in the tropics have developed a rich variety of dishes and snacks based on the starchy food banana. Food bananas can for instance be boiled, steamed, baked or fried. Sweet desert bananas are also popular, but they are not as commonly found in markets since they are less durable and tend to get injured during transport.
A vast majority of the banana growers in the world are small-scale farmers who cultivate the banana tree plant to put food on their own table and sell off any spare bananas at the local food market to generate some income. India is currently the top banana producing country in the world, but it is not famous for being a major banana producer since the crops are consumed within India instead of being exported. The major export countries are instead Ecuador, Costa Rica and Colombia in Latin America, and the Philippines in South East Asia. Together, these four countries account for roughly two-thirds of all exported bananas.
The banana plant tree can yield fruit year round and by keeping several banana plants you can serve nutritious banana dishes 12 months year. Cultivating bananas can therefore provide families with a reliable source of food even during harsh periods when other crops are hard to come by. Roughly 75% of a banana consists of water while 25% is dry matter. When you eat bananas, you ingest ample amounts of vitamin A, B6, C and potassium.
One rhizome (root) can produce numerous pseudostems and each stem can grow a cluster that consists of up to 20 tiers (commonly referred to as hands). One such tier can in turn contain up to 20 bananas. The exact size of a ripe banana varies tremendously depending on species and cultivar. Bananas can also be obtained in a wide range of different colours, but a majority of the exported bananas are yellow. In the tropics, you can for instance find bananas that turn red or purple as they become ripe.
Outside the tropics, the most commonly encountered banana variant comes from the banana tree plant known as 'Cavendish'. This cultivar handles transportation better than most other species and cultivars and is also resistant to Panama wilt disease. A new strain of Panama wilt disease has however been found in South East Asia and this strain seems to be capable of attacking even the 'Cavendish' banana tree plant. The new strain is expected to spread outside Asia sooner or later and a lot of energy is currently being focused on creating new cultivars that will resist this new threat while simultaneously being durable enough to cope with transportation.
