Banana

Do you know "Babana" ??? This fruit well known as the useful plant in Thailand, it is called "Kuay". Every parts of it can be used; such as fruit - eat, the inner trunk of body - curry, leaves - wrapping and decoration etc. There are many kinds of Banana in my garden, these fruits are different in shape, size and flavor. The most banana I love is "Kuay Namwa" - in Thai. Let's know more about "Banana".

Banana - name for several species of the genus Musa and for the fruits these produce. The banana plant—one of the largest herbaceous plants—is said to be native to tropical Asia, but is now cultivated throughout the tropics. Used to a minor degree for its leaf fiber, the banana is of the same genus as the extremely valuable fiber plant Manila hemp , or abaca, and is also related to the bird-of-paradise flower . Along with the banana, these are economically the most important plants of the banana family (the Musaceae), a group of large monocotyledonous tropical herbs. The banana is of palmlike aspect and has very large leaves, the overlapping bases of which form the so-called false trunk. As the plant reaches maturity its true stem rises from the ground and pushes through the center of the false trunk to emerge from the top of the plant, there becoming pendent and bearing the male and female flowers. The female flowers develop into bananas, the clusters of upturned fruits being called "hands" and each banana a "finger." The plants are cut down to harvest the fruit, since they bear only once. Their seeds are sterile; shoots from the rhizomes are used for propagation. The banana fruit (botanically a berry) is a staple food in the tropics and is used in many forms, raw or cooked, and grown in many varieties, e.g., the plantain. Dried bananas are eaten as "banana figs" and inferior fruits serve as a stock feed. Banana oil is a synthetic product, so named because of its odor. Although the banana has long been cultivated in Asia—Alexander the Great encountered it in India—the large international traffic began only in the late 19th cent. with the development of refrigerated transport. Bananas are classified in the division Magnoliophyta , class Liliopsida, order Zingiberales, family Musaceae.

History :
The banana is mentioned for the first time in history in buddhist texts 600 years BC. Alexander the Great discovers the taste of the banana in the Indian valleys in 327 BC . The existence of an organized banana plantation could be found in China back in the year 200 AD. In 650 AD, Islamic conquerors brought the banana back to Palestine. The Arabic merchants finally spread the bananas all over Africa.

Only in 1502 the Portuguese start the first banana plantation in the Caribbean and in central America.

Banana is the common name for a fruit and also the herbaceous plants of the genus Musa which produce this commonly eaten fruit. They are native to the tropical region of Southeast Asia. Bananas are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea. Today, they are cultivated throughout the tropics.

Banana plants are of the family Musaceae. They are cultivated primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent for the production of fibre and as ornamental plants. As the bananas are mainly tall, upright, and fairly sturdy, they are often mistaken for trees, when the truth is the main or upright stem is called a pseudostem, literally meaning "fake stem", which for some species can obtain a height of up to 2–8 m, with leaves of up to 3.5 m in length. Each pseudostem can produce a bunch of yellow, green, or even red bananas before dying and being replaced by another pseudostem.

The banana fruit grow in hanging clusters, with up to 20 fruit to a tier (called a hand), and 3-20 tiers to a bunch. The total of the hanging clusters is known as a bunch, or commercially as a "banana stem", and can weigh from 30–50 kg. The fruit averages 125 g, of which approximately 75% is water and 25% dry matter content. Each individual fruit (known as a banana or 'finger') has a protective outer layer (a peel or skin) with a fleshy edible inner portion. Both skin and inner part can be eaten raw or cooked. Western cultures generally eat the inside raw and throw away the skin while some Asian cultures generally eat both the skin and inside cooked. Typically, the fruit has numerous strings (called 'phloem bundles') which run between the skin and inner part. Bananas are a valuable source of vitamin B6, vitamin C, and potassium.

Bananas are grown in at least 107 countries. In popular culture and commerce, "banana" usually refers to soft, sweet "dessert" bananas. The bananas from a group of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called plantains. Bananas may also be cut and dried and eaten as a type of chip. Dried bananas are also ground into banana flour.

Although the wild species have fruits with numerous large, hard seeds, virtually all culinary bananas have seedless fruits. Bananas are classified either as dessert bananas (meaning they are yellow and fully ripe when eaten) or as green cooking bananas. Almost all export bananas are of the dessert types; however, only about 10-15% of all production is for export, with the United States and European Union being the dominant buyers.

The growing of the Banana :
The banana plant is ...not a tree, but a giant herb of the same family as lilies, orchids and palms. There are about 400 varieties of bananas. The rhizome is planted and gives a first shoot 3 or 4 weeks later. After 9 to 10 months the inflorescence from the foliated circlet has a diameter that can be as large as 7 meters. Three days after that, a bud hangs on the plant. On the fifth day, the bud turns red and starts opening. On the seventh day the leafs who covered it are falling down and finally two days later you can already see the first banana hands.The trunk of a banana plant is made of sheaths of overlapping leaves, tightly wrapped around each other like stalks in a celery bunch.

The word banana is derivated from the Arabic meaning 'finger'.

Each banana stem consists of 10 to 14 hands each of them carrying from 18 to 20 bananas.

The harvest starts when the banana is still green.

Bananas for domestic consumption are cut green.

Then the race starts against the clock. From the harvest through the delivery to the shop resailer, there are only 20 days left. The hands are removed, washed, cut in smaller pieces called clusters, packed in hygienical carton boxes, each of those boxes weighing 18 kg net (40 lb).

Transportation :
The transportation is done with specialized refrigerated ships . Bananas are loaded into refrigerated cargo vessels and shipped green at a controlled temperature of 14,5 C (58 F). Each ship contains 250.000 boxes of bananas collected the day before.

The crossing to Europe lasts about 11 days. The temperature is frequently controlled to avoid any premature ripening.

Ref : http://www.encyclopedia.com, http://en.wikipedia.org, and http://www.vandamme.be