Fruit Development

Fruit Development
Banana varieties which produce fruit of commercial use are parthenocarpic. They are propagated by rhizome.

The leaves originate from a meristematic region located at the apex of the rhizome at about the level of the surface. The leaves are built by cell division of marginal meristems and emerge in sequence.

After the first leave expands, subsequent leaves emerge through the center of the previous leaf sheath.

The overlapping and tightly packed leaf sheaths from pseudostem of the banana plant. After about 9 months of growth there is a switchover from vegetative to reproductive phase.

The central zone of the apical stem springs into activity and rapidly produces a succession of bracts and flower primordial.

Then, as the true stem elongates, the floral apex is forced up the inside of the pseudostem and eventually emerges from the top of the pseudostem.

The inflorescene consist of many groups of flowers, each subtended and covered by a bract.

About 6-15 floral bracts each containing 15-20 female flowers are produced. The bracts drop off in a few days, leaving the female flowers to develop into horticultural mature fruit in the next 90-150 days.

The fruit consist of outer cuticle and epidermis, several layers of hypodermal parenchyma and abroad region of parenchyma cells interspersed with latex vessels, vascular bundles and air spaces.

The hypodermal cells and innermost initialing cells end to be smaller and more tightly packed than the rest of the cells.

The banana fruit has a relatively large proportion of peel tissue, which makes up about 80, 40 and 33% of the fresh weight of juvenile, mature and fully ripe fruits, respectively.
Fruit Development