Types of banana

A banana produced for export account for around 13% of total world-wide Musa production, and this is almost exclusively Cavendish varieties.

The Cavendish banana the most popular fruit in the United States and Europe is the clone of a sterile mutant banana that has been propagated by human cultivators for millennia.

There are about 55 million tons of Cavendish bananas grown a year worldwide. Cavendish is also produced widely by non-exporting countries, accounting for 35.5% of production in Asia and the Pacific, of which only 5% is exported.

Cavendish banana

Plantains (AAB) are the most important type of Musa produced in West and Central Africa, accounting for 73% of production. However, this only constitutes 44% of global plantain production, with another 40% being produced in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Plantain is a natural hybrid of Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. Most of the plantain (AAB) types apparently originated in the Philippines and India, the only Asia regions where there is still a great diversity of plantain cultigens.

Other important sub-group bananas include the East African highland bananas, which constitutes some 72% of bananas grown in the Great Lakes region of East Africa and the Maia Maoli/Popoulu group of bananas which are cultivated throughout the Pacific Islands.
Types of banana

Cavendish Banana

Cavendish Banana
Cavendish banana is common in the world banana trade. It is cultivars originating in Vietnam and China.

It becomes replacement for Gros Michel banana in the 1950s. Bananas first became widely popular in the 1800s, when railway companies started establishing plantations of Gros Michel or “Big Michael” bananas along their tracks.

These bananas could be easily transported once they were ripe, generating double profits for the railway by allowing the company to charge for passengers and freight, and to transport a costly exotic food on the same train.

By the 1920s, however, a problem was starting to develop with the Big Michael cultivar; the bananas were susceptible to Panama Disease, a fungus which attacks and kills banana plants. In the 1950s, it was clear that this cultivar was in trouble, and the Cavendish banana was selected to replace it.

Cavendish banana plantations can be found in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia and the bulk of bananas on the shelves of Western supermarkets are Cavendish banana.

Cavendish banana range from approximately 15-25 c, in length and are used in baking, fruit salads, and to compliment foods.

The outer skin is partially green when sold in food markets and turns yellow when it ripens. When over-ripe, the skin will turn black and the flesh becomes mushy.

Bananas ripen naturally and are at their peak ripeness when the peel is all yellow with a few dark brown specks beginning to appear.

The Cavendish is quite possibly the world’s perfect food. They are nutritious and convenient, there are cheap and consistently available.

Americans eat more bananas than any other kind of fresh fruit, averaging about 26.2 pounds of them per year, per person.

It also turn out that 100 billion Cavendish bananas consumed annually worldwide are perfect from a genetic standpoint, every single one a duplicate of every other.
Cavendish Banana

Banana in Malaysia

Banana in Malaysia
In Malaysia, bananas are being commercialized for export. Cavendish is being planted on a few sites, in dense stands allowing pathogens and pests present in this region of coevolution to reveal their epidemic for the fist time. These are as a rotation crop after old palm oil. The plantations are severely affected by Fusarium wilt. The plantations were established with no concern for this disease.

In Malaysia, banana is the second most widely cultivated fruit, covering about 26,000 ha with a total production of 530,000 metric tones. About 50% of the banana growing land is cultivated with Pisang Berangan and the Cavendish type.

However, banana production in Malaysia has decreased because of an increasing threat of diseases (particularly Fusarium wilt), high labor costs and marketing issues. However, it is still popular grown and contributes about 16% of the total fruit production areas.

Banana cultivation is largely a smallholder enterprise where farms are small, unorganized and farmers often adopt inferior technology. Apparently, this production practice often results in low yield and inferior quality.

Poor quality has been a major constraint to export of fresh fruits, including banana. It is therefore necessary to adopt good production practices and inefficient postharvest handling to ensure consistent supply of high quality banana for export.

There is also little research on banana. Local agriculture at the village level provided all the fruit needed for local markets, and the village production was left to its own devices, with research going to rubber, oil palm and later to rice. Although some academic research on bananas exists at universities and at the Malaysia Research and Development Authority (MARDI), there is little connection with commercial development.
Banana in Malaysia