BANANA FRUIT

Modified atmosphere packaging

2011-11-09T19:53:00.000-08:00

Modified atmosphere packaging is for long distance transport of bananas, a system was developed and patented by the United Fruit Company.

In modified atmosphere packaging is to provide a low oxygen atmosphere in individual boxes of bananas to prevent ripening during transit.

It involves the sealing of commodities in plastic films so that the composition of gases of respiration and transpiration in and around the banana is altered.

Modified atmosphere packaging works by slowing down the deterioration of the banana or minimally processed fruits.

The storage life of banana can be increased five times when they are stored in plastic film where the gas content stabilized at about 2% O2 and 5% CO2 with an ethylene absorber compared with fruit sites without wraps.

There are plastics that have different behaviors to protect and preserve products in storage and distribution. They provide different diffusion action of gases, vapors and other low molecular weight
ecies through the materials.

There are special applications such as packaging bananas where an ethylene gas remain in a package is used to artificially ripen the bananas.

The amount of gas required to initiate bananas to ripen depends on their stage of maturity at harvest, the pulp temperature of the fruit and the time of exposure of the fruit to the gas.

Generally, very low concentration of ethylene are sufficient to mature fruit at 14-19 degree Celsius. These are in the range of 1 – 10 ppm.
Modified atmosphere packaging

Control blood pressure by consume banana

2011-09-19T20:23:00.001-07:00

Bananas combat hunger and leave us satisfied and feeling full, It’s the combination of fiber an fructose that gives bananas their superfood status.

Mild hypertension can be treated without medication. The treatment of hypertension include weight reduction, exercise, a diet containing foods high in potassium and magnesium and avoidance of alcohol, salty foods and cigarettes.

Potassium may help top help vasodilate vasodilatation or open arteries, thereby lowering blood pressure.

Bananas are now believed to be able to help lower blood pressure.

Research has shown that just eating two bananas a day can reduce blood pressure by 10%. This is because the banana is one of the best natural sources of potassium a mineral that plays a very important role in keeping blood pressure at healthy levels.

One medium size banana contain 10 to 13 percent of daily requirement of potassium. Bananas are sodium free and they have no fat or cholesterol.

Because bananas can reduce blood pressure also easy to digest, it is a good for many elderly people.

The United States Food and Drug Administration has given permission to banana producers to claim that eating bananas can reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure and strokes.
Control blood pressure by consume banana

World Production trends of banana

2011-08-19T19:36:00.001-07:00

Bananas and plantain are very important fruit crops in the tropical world. They grown largely by smallholders and play a major role of food security and income generation for million of the region’s rural poor worldwide.

Banana and plantains are perennial crops that grow quickly and can be harvested all year round, they were cultivated on an area of some 9 million hectares in year 2000; world production average 92 million tons per annum in 1998 – 2000 and was estimated at 99 million tones in 2001.

From 1992 to 2006 global exports increased from 10.7 million tons to 16.789 million tons.

Musa production is growing faster than that of other starchy staples and increase in production has occurred in all regions.

At the global yields of bananas and plantains have increase from 8.97 t/ha in 1970 to 16.46 t/ha per year in 2000.

As of the year 2000 there were 4.1 million hectares devoted to banana production worldwide including Brazil - 521, 285 hectares, India – 490,000, and Philippines – 383 387 hectares.

It is estimated that world banana production increased by 30 percent over the 1990s, mainly as a result of rising Cavendish output.

Total value of international banana trade ranges between US$4.5 and 5 billion per year.

Banana is an important crop in the three major regions, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

In 2009, India led the world in banana production, representing approximately 28% of the worldwide crop, mostly for domestic consumption.
World Production trends of banana

Banana Leaves

2011-06-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

There are hundreds of uses for uses for very part of the banana plant. In Thailand banana leaves used as wrapping paper or cooking parchment.

The banana leaf may have been the original equivalent of the modern paper plate. Fresh green banana leaves can be lining the serving dishes for a party to make the food look great and reduces the load of washing up later.

In India, the practice of eating off banana leaves started in ancient times for reason of hygiene. A meal eaten off a banana leaf, tricky as it is for the uninitiated, is an experience so satisfying that it s is now an international phenomenon.

Banana leaf is selected with care for the use in cookery. Very young leaf, thin and yellow is strong and makes the ordeal wrapping for something which needs to be cooked for some time. If mature, dark green leaf is used, it is first made pliant by softening it over a flame. This process enhances it s flavor.

A banana leaf can also serve as a non stick frying pan. This means that no need to use oil and it is healthy way of cooking food. The many uses of banana leave make them a vital part of traditional life in countries such as Sri Lanka.

Banana leaves are also sometimes used as wedding decorations.
Banana Leaves

Vitamin in Banana

2011-04-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

Banana is a good source of many vitamins and minerals particularly vitamin A, vitamin B and vitamin C.

Many of banana varieties contain high levels of provitamin A carotenoids, the source of the yellow or orange color of the fruit.

The importance of carotenoids becomes clear when one considers that vitamin A deficiency affects around 120 millions children a year. Vitamin deficiency has many effects including weakening the immune system and causing blindness.

Because they contain vitamin A bananas and plantains act as an aid to digestion, and it is reported that boiled mashed ripe fruit can be good for constipation, especially when mixed with other recommended plants.

Banana contains about 10-25 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, though figures as high as 50 mg have been quoted in some varieties.

The quantity is the same whether it is ripe or unripe. Vitamin C in banana helps the body to heal and defend against infections.

Vitamin C also is valuable in the absorption of iron, synthesis of connective tissue, and blood formation.
Vitamin in Banana

Mineral in Banana

2011-02-01T06:16:00.000-08:00

Mineral in Banana
Chemical analysis shows the banana to contain: water 73.3 per cent; protein 1.3; fat 0.06 per cent; total carbohydrate 22 per cent; mineral element 0.8 per cent.

The mineral content of the banana is largely potash, sodium and chlorine. Lime and iron exist in but small amount.

It also contain magnesium, copper, sulfur and calcium.

Banana help build bones and are very good for jaundice because of their iron content. They also aid acute gout and arthritis.

As one of the leading fresh fruit sources of potassium, bananas are in good supply all year long. One medium banana contains close to 400 mg of potassium, a mineral that plays a role in lowering blood pressure, sending oxygen to the brain and regulating the body’s water content.

Potassium also helps kidneys function properly. Potassium is also needed for muscle contraction. It helps the muscle that make heart pump and the muscle that digest the food.

The potassium level in the body can be restored to normal with a high potassium banana snack.

A fresh banana also supplies 120 mg sulfur, 8 mg silicon,. 33 mg of magnesium and 26 mg of phosphorus, along with ample amount of copper, chromium, iron, fluoride, manganese, selenium and zinc.

Bananas are high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.
Mineral in Banana

Banana early 19th century

2010-08-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Banana early 19th century
Banana were first found in the USA as early as 1904, these preconditions were not to be to be achieved until the second half of the nineteenth century: as late as 1873 the American Encyclopedia’s article on the banana did not even joint that it was ever available outside the topics.

The domestic and export industry in the Caribbean used to be based largely on the Gros Michel. Which in terms of quantity and cash value of the crop was one of the world’s most important fruit varieties.

Jamaica was the first country to undertake its cultivation on extensive scale; Costa Rica and Panama were not far behind.

In the Canary Islands, the west coast of Africa and Brazil the dwarf or Cavendish variety has been of greater commercial importance since the outset.

Beginning about 1925, great changes began to take place in banana production through the application of modern cultivation practices, especially in the Caribbean.

Careful examination to eliminate unsuitable soils before planting, efficient drainage practices, the selection of proper planting material, overhead irrigation and especial, the use of fungicides to control the Sigatoka disease and other developments put the industry onto an intensive basis.
Banana early 19th century

Banana tree

2010-07-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

Banana tree
Banana a fruit which belongs to the tropics and has its origin in south east Asia, has achieved a remarkably high level of consumption in temperate countries.

For consumers there, bananas are almost uniform in appearance, being varieties which ship well and look good.

But in the tropical regions where bananas grow there are countless varieties, varying widely in appearance and eating qualities.

There are, moreover, both eating bananas and cooking bananas, usually called PLANTAINS.

The banana plant is a strange growth, which looks like a palm tree, but is not a tree. It is a perennial herb which grows a complete new ‘trunk’ every year, and does back to its roots after it has flowered and fruited.

This is all the more remarkable in that some kinds grow to a height of 12 m (40’).The ‘trunk’ is in fact composed of overlapping bases of leaves wrapped tightly to make a fairly rigid column.

New leaves constantly emerge at the top, forming a crown of leaves which are blown into tattered strips by the wind (a neat evolutionary adaptation to lower their wind resistance, for the ‘ trunk’ is not as strong as a real tree trunk and risks being blown down).

Eventually the flowering stem emerges at the top, bearing a large flower surrounded by red bracts, the whole growth having a strikingly phallic appearance.

The bananas develop some way back from the flowering tip of the stem.

The increasing weight causes the stem to bend over, so that the fruits point upwards. They are arranged in ‘hands’ of ten to twenty bananas set in a double now in a half spiral around the stem. There may be up to fifteen hands in a complete bunch, which can weigh 45 kg (100 lb) or more.
Banana tree

Cultivation of Banana and Plantains

2010-05-28T23:17:00.000-07:00

Cultivation of Banana and Plantains
Bananas and plantains are cultivated in over 100 countries in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world where they constitute a major stale food crop for millions of people, as well as providing a valued source though local and international trade.

They are grown over a harvested are of approximately 10 million hectares, with an annual production of around 88 million metric tones, who which a third is produced in each of the African, Asia Pacific and Latin America and Caribbean regions.

They are the developing world’s fourth most important global food crop after rice, wheat and maize in terms of gross value of production.

The vast majority of producers are small scales farmers growing the crop either for home consumption or for local markets.

As well as being a cheap and easily produced source of energy, they are also rich in vitamin A, C and B6.

Furthermore, with the increasing urbanization, bananas and plantains are becoming more and more important as cash crops, in some cases providing the sole source of income to rural populations, thus playing an important role in poverty alleviation.

Bananas and plantains are one of the cheapest foods to produce. The cost of production of one kg of plantain (assuming black Sigatoka control is not required) being less than for most other staples, including sweet potato, rice, maize and yam.

Consequently, bananas and plantains can be a very cheap food to buy and are hence an important food for low income families.

Bananas and plantains will also grow in a range of environments and will produce fruit year around, thus providing a source of energy during the “hungry-period” between crop harvest.

They are particularly suited to intercropping systems and to mixed farming with livestock and they are also popular as a backyard crop with urban populations.

When grown in perennial production systems, they maintain soil cover throughout the year and if their biomass is used for much, soil fertility and organic matter remain stable.

In mixed farming systems, bananas are used as a ground shade and nurse-crop for a range of shade crops including cocoa, coffee black pepper and nutmeg.

In some countries, bananas are more than just a food crop. Among others uses they also provide an important source of fibre and are fermented to produce alcohol.
Cultivation of Banana and Plantains

Origin and History of Banana

2010-04-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

Origin and History of Banana
Bananas are believed to have originated primarily in Malaysia about 4,000 years ago, thence they spread over an area from India to the Philippines and New Guinea.

People probably used bananas for food long before recorded history. The armies of Alexander the Great found the bananas growing in India in 327 BC.

Arabian traders introduced the banana plant into Africa at a very early date since Portuguese explorers who discovered the Guinea Coast of Africa found bananas growing there in 1482 A.D.

Then, soon after the discovery of the New World explorers took bananas from Africa to tropical America. Thus, the banana plant traveled more than half way around the world to reach the areas of tropical America where, today, about two thirds of the world’s bananas are produced.

It was not until later part of the 19th century that bananas were brought into the United States in quantities for sale in stores.

Even then only those people who lived near seacoast cities where bananas schooners docked tasted or saw bananas.

Bananas are more perishable than some other fruits; so specialized, rapid transport needed to be developed before the use banana became widespread.

Producing bananas and getting them to market on temperature areas of the world stimulated the creation of large banana plantations.

The first big name on banana export business was the United Fruit Company, formed in 1899, which in 1970 merged into United Brands.

Standard Fruit and Steamship Company was established in 1923 as a competitor to the United Fruit Company. In the early days of banana industry, the large landholdings and one –crop economics made these multinational campaniles important influences in some Latin American countries.
Origin and History of Banana

Cryopreservation

2010-04-06T08:42:00.001-07:00

Cryopreservation
Cryopreservation is a promising option for safe,, long term, storage of Musa germplasm.

It involves the storage of embryogenic cell suspension of proliferating in vitro Musa meristems in liquid nitrogen (-196 degree Celsius).

At this temperature cell division and metabolic processes stop and the plant material can therefore be stored without modification for along period of time.

The method also requires limited space, protects the material from contamination, involves little maintenance and is cost effective over a long period of time.

The question whether embryogenic cell suspension or proliferating meristems should be preserved depends on the purpose.

Proliferating meristems are currently the material of choice for long term preservation of Musa germplasm as the production of embryogenic cell lines is highly genotypes specific.

However, the embryogenic cell times, which may ne produced as a result of genetic transformation research can also be used for cryopreservation.

This improved technique has proved to be suitable for a range of Musa genotypes.
Cryopreservation

Banana Disorders and Disease

2010-03-09T03:31:00.000-08:00

Banana Disorders and Disease
Banana production is frequently affected by floods and windstorms. A wind storm causing plants to fall over is called a blowdown (although this is less of a problem with Cavendish bananas than Gros Michel).

Losses from storm damage are classified as doubling when the pseudostem collapse, uprooting when the plan falls over with the rhizome attached and snap-off when the rhizome breaks near ground level when the plant falls.

Banana plants are also subject to insect damage, including both nematodes, which attack root systems and insects such as caterpillars, scales and mealy bugs which attack leaves.

Also they suffer bacterial and fungal infections. Frequent inspection of banana plants are conducted to check for insect infestations, and leaves, soil and water can also be tested for the presence or certain diseases.

With the conversion from Gros Michel to Cavendish varieties in the late 1950s and early 1960s root not cause by the burrowing nematode replaced fusarial wilt – Panama disease – as the most serious soil borne disease in tropical areas.

A strain of the Panama diseases pathogen, Race 4, remains a problem even on Cavendish varieties in some subtropical areas.

The shipping of Cavendish varieties in various plastic wrappings inside cartons has made post-harvest rots of the crown and peel sporadically important.
Banana Disorders and Disease

Fruit Development

2010-02-23T07:43:00.001-08:00

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

Taxonomic Classification of Banana

2010-02-03T23:24:00.000-08:00

Taxonomic Classification
Bananas and plantains belong to the genus Musa, of the family Musaceae. The genus has five sections namely Eumusa (x=11), Rhodochlamys (x = 11), Australimusa (x- 10), Calimusa (x = 10) and incerte sedis ( x= 7, 0).

The vast majority of cultivated bananas and plantains belong to section “Euromusa” and have originated in tropical region of South Eats Asia from two wild species - Musa acuminate Colla and Musa balbisiana Colla.

Depending upon their ploidy level. They posses 22, 23 or 44 chromosomes (x = 11). The most widely cultivated clones of commerce are the triploids (2n = 3x = 33) which have more vigorous growth characteristics and higher yield than diploids (2n = 2x=22).

Tetraploid (2n = 4x = 44) clones are rather rare but diploids are often cultivated in tropical areas for local consumption and some are valued for their good flavored fruit.

The development of edible bananas initially resulted from the human selection of diploid M. acuminate varieties that were parthenocarpic.

Later, selection was for female infertility which resulted in fruits with few or no seeds.

Diploid (AA) cultivars gave rise through nuclear restitution during meiosis, to triploid (AAA) cultivars.

Today’s the major export banana cultivars belong to the AAA group.
Taxonomic Classification

Historical Notes of Banana

2010-01-16T00:18:00.000-08:00

Historical Notes of Banana
Bananas figs produced by sun drying ripe bananas may be one of the oldest processed food products.

After banana figs, the next processed banana products were apparently dehydrated flakes and power.

In 1944, the total volume of USA imports peaked to around 5200 ton per year, followed by a decline in 2 years to less than half that amount.

In 1940s Ecuador was not a large exporter of banana flakes but is now the world’s largest supplier, mostly from the Confoco plant near Machala in the southern banana growing region.

Banana puree is at present the highest volume processed banana product. The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) pioneered the production of aseptic banana puree at a plant on the north shore of the Dominican Republic near the town of Pepillo Salcedo.

India has made several efforts to enter the processed bananas market in the US most of which seem failed, but in Europe and other market, some progress has been made.

Banana production in India has traditionally revolved around the monsoon rains and replanting every year mostly on small farms.

As long as this situation persists, it will be hard for India to compete with the comparatively sophisticated large farm agriculture of the Latin America major exporting countries.

Indonesia has installed a modern banana processing plant by judging by US import statistics it has had no significant effect on the US market. With the large populations of countries like China and India nearby, Indonesia may not need to export to the US to maintain healthy levels of processed banana production.
Historical Notes of Banana

The Healing Powers of Banana

2009-12-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

The Healing Powers of Banana
Bananas are usually harvested green shipped green and ripened by wholesale fruit jobbers in air-conditioned ripening rooms.

The Gros Michel variety is the most popular of the many varieties. It produces the largest and most compact bunch, which makes it easier to ship. The thick skin of the banana protects the soft fruit.

Other popular varieties of banana are the Claret or red banana which has a gummy flesh; the Lady Finger, which is the smallest variety, but has a delicate, sweet flavour and the Apple, which has an acid flavour and states somewhat like a mellow apple.

In the tropics, bananas are often cooked and served with beans, rice or tortillas.

In the Latin American countries, the ripe banana is sometimes dried in the sun in much the same manner as figs and raisins.

They are often sliced when ripe and left in the sun until they are covered with a coating of which, sugary powder that arises from their own juices.

The sugars in banana are readily assimilated and they contain many vitamins and minerals and a great deal of fiber.

They are excellent for young children and infants and are good in reducing diets because they satisfy the appetite and are low in fat.

Because they are so soft, they are good for persons who have intestinal disturbances and for convalescents. Bananas feed the natural acidophilus bacteria of the bowel, and their high potassium content benefits the muscular system.
The Healing Powers of Banana

Botanical aspect of Banana

2009-11-02T18:49:00.000-08:00

Botanical aspect of Banana
Bananas belong to the genus Musa, of the family Musaceae and the order Scitamineae, but the botany of the cultivated forms has only relatively recently been clearly defined.

The family Musaceae includes many subfamilies or genera, covering a wide range of plants such as arrowroot, canes, ginger, grasses, lilies and palms.

The genus Musa comprises over 20 distinct species with over 300 varieties.

Amongst these are Musa and from sub-division Eumusa, from which comes the edible banana, which probably had its origins in wild species, inter alia, Musa acuminate and Musa balbisiana.

The edible bananas in Eumusa have 22, 33 or 44 chromosomes.

The basic number of chromosomes in this section is n = 11, so these cultivars are respectively diploid and tetraploid, with triploid being generally the most numerous.

The leaves and bracts are spirally arranged.

Male and female (or hermaphrodite) flowers are separated within one inflorescence; the fruit is a many seeded berry.

The Australimusa series of edible bananas is easily distinguished from Eumusa by having an erect bunch and pink juice.

Within the AA subdivision, Sucrier is the only important edible diploid acuminate type, widely cultivated and highly favored for its sweet, thin skinned fruits.

It is resistant to Panama disease but highly susceptible to leaf spot – two of the significant disease to affect bananas.

Within Eumusa, it is possible, with experience to assign a cultivar to its correct group almost at a glance, and at the turn of the millennium about 80% of the world’s cultivars are well known.

The agricultural significance of physical mutations in bananas is very great, and the ‘Dwarf Cavendish’ bananas, which is so significant in world trade is in fact a mutant of an important clone.
Botanical aspect of Banana

Cultivars of Banana

2009-10-14T17:10:00.001-07:00

Cultivars of Banana
From a genetic makeup that seems to be almost wholly derived from M. acuminate come the dessert bananas of world trade designated Musa (AAA) group indicated their triploid character and acuminate (AA) origin.

The cooking bananas or plantains of commerce designated Musa (AAB) group have about one third of their genetic make-up from balbisiana.

There are five major banana cultivars grown all over the world. These are Gros Michel, Lacaton, Robusta, Giant Cavendish and Dwarf Cavendish.

Gros Michel, producing bananas of uniform size, has been the leading banana cultivar in world trade for a long time.

It has an attractive color and appearance, and the fruit is long and slender.

Due to its large plant size and low planting density, it is poorer yielder than the cultivars of the Cavendish group.

It is also susceptible to Panama disease and is therefore increasingly being replaced by the members of the Cavendish group.

All cultivars of the Cavendish group are resistant to Panama disease and have fruits with blunt tips, in contrast to Gros Michel, which has a bottle-necked fruit tip.

Brazil covers large areas with Dwarf Cavendish. In India, it is called Basrai and forms the major commercial variety of banana.

Giant Cavendish or Harichal (India) is giant only when compared to “Dwarf”: it is slightly taller.

Robusta is grown extensively in the West Indies, Central and South America and Africa.

Other Cavendish cultivars are Valery and American.
Cultivars of Banana

Banana and plantains

2009-09-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

Banana and plantains
Bananas and plantains (Musa spp.) are rhizomatous, giant perennial herbs cultivated throughout the tropics for their parthenocarpics, seedless fruits.

They are the fourth most important global food commodity after rice, wheat and milk in terms of gross value of production.

During 1997, their annual world production was estimated to be around 88.47 m tones.

The banana fruits are an important export from South and Central America and the West Indies to North America and Europe, with world trade amounting to nearly 20 m tones annually.

Plantains represent 33% of the world production of Musa and provide up to 25% of the daily carbohydrate intake for 72 millions Africans.

Bananas and plantains thrive in a wide range of environments between 30 degree North and South of the equator.

Bananas are chiefly eaten raw as a dessert fruit, because in the ripe state they are sweet and easily digested. Plantain fruits are unpalatable when raw and must be cooked, fried, pounded, roasted or boiled before consumption.

Expert has highlighted the apparent ambiguity in using the word “Plantain”. To many, plantain implies a cooking banana but in Spanish the word can also be used to mean dessert forms.

In Hindi too, there is no spate world to distinguish cooking starchy cultivars. Plantains are thus, referred to as cooking bananas.

There appears to be no accepted botanical distinction between starchy types, that have to be cooked and sweeter types that can be eaten raw.

Edible bananas are commonly divided into dessert bananas cooking bananas and plantains and bear bananas.

Dessert bananas are palatable when eaten raw at ripening, while other bananas are generally processed by cooking or fermentation before consumption.

The plantains are specific type of cooking banana whose remains starchy at ripening. They are characterized by the orange yellow color of the compound tepal in the flowers and the orange yellow color of the fruit pulp at ripeness.

Fruits are long and slender angular-to-pointed and unpalatable when raw.

Seaths of plantains are slightly waxy, petiole margins are incurved and petiole bases are clasping.

The lamina bases are rounded and peduncles are slightly hairy. Basal flowers are biseriate and parthenocarpics. The fruit skin is glabrous and fruit are indehiscent.
Banana and plantains

History: Bananas During 1840s in Rio Negro

2009-08-26T22:42:00.001-07:00

History: Bananas During 1840s in Rio Negro
In the mid 1840s, Thomas Young, Deputy Superintendent of the British Central American Land Company, traveled along the Rio Negro, one of many rivers that cut through the narrow coastal plain that stretches along Honduras’s Caribbean coastline.

Paddling upstream with a group of Miskito Indians, Young observed “thousands of banana tress growing spontaneously, the fruit of which is so much sought after by the natives, who come from very distant parts to Black River, to gather it.”

He noted the ease with which the plant could be cultivated and added that “the ripe fruit is highly esteemed, although it is apt to disagree with European if eaten shortly before or after taking spirits.

The green fruit is cut onto slices by the Spaniards and expose to the sun, and when rubbed, forms a kind of flour of which they are fond.

When Young visited the Rio Negro region, bananas were a novelty item in Europe and the United States, and little export oriented agricultural of any kind took place in the Caribbean lowlands of Honduras.

Most of the region’s nineteenth century exports, including mahogany, fustic (a dyewood), deer skins, sarsaparilla, and rubber, were extracts from forested ecosystems and wetlands.

As late as 1859, traveler journeying by canoe from Omoa to Puerto Corte’s described forests that extended from hillsides down to the edge of narrow sandy beaches along the coast.

Agriculture in the region can best be described as small scale monocultures and polycultures, Extensive plantings of bananas, plantains, sugar cane, and pastureland were few and geographically dispersed.

This situation started to change in the 1870s, when schooners from US ports began arriving with increasing frequency in order to purchase bananas and coconuts.

Around the same time, the Honduran national government began to embrace export oriented economic development models.
History: Bananas During 1840s in Rio Negro

Processed Banana

2009-08-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

Processed Banana
Bananas are considered the fourth most important food crop in the world, after the three main cereals rice, wheat and corn.

World production statistics are not very accurate as in many countries bananas are produced in home gardens or small plots that often escape the reporting.

For many years fresh bananas have had the highest per-capita consumption of any fresh fruit in the U.S. They displaced apples in the early 1990’s.

In the tropical countries of all continents, bananas have been a staple food for centuries.

The seedless bananas consumed today in the industrialized countries are the result of long painstaking selection and breeding, some done by our primitive ancestors.

Until a few years ago banana seeds from seminal verities were used in breeding. Tissue culture is widely used at present to improve the verities.

Although fresh bananas are widely consumed in develop countries, the consumption of processed banana products is less than that of other processed fruits. Several attempts to launch consumer products such as canned sliced bananas in syrup have failed.

This is partially because fresh ripe bananas are readily available year-round, even in the northern countries, thanks to a remarkable logistics and marketing system.

On the other hand, seasonal crops such as apples produce an abundant crop in a short time.

In the not too distant past, the only way to use so many apples in the short crop period was to process them into products such as juice and applesauce.

There is no such pressure with bananas, they are produced any time of the year with little volume variation.

Therefore, the volume of processed banana products has developed slowly. Also this situation makes the quality of the processed banana products vulnerable to comparison with the readily available fresh “real thing.”

Canned peaches in syrup do not resemble fresh peaches in flavor and aroma, but between crops one either has canned peaches or no peaches at all.

Processed bananas are still produced mostly from rejected of the fresh banana trade. Therefore, the varieties used are the same as for fresh fruit, but there has been a decline in the number of varieties being grown, resulting in only a few selected varieties and sub-varieties of the Cavendish type being used for processing.
Processed Banana

Banana trade

2009-07-02T19:27:00.001-07:00

Banana trade
Bananas are the most important traded fruit in the world and the most important fruit in the diet in most Western countries.

Almost 60m tones are produced annually and the general trend of production is still upwards.

Healthy and filling, bananas are a food for the twenty first century even more than they have been for the twentieth century.

Around a quarter of banana production finds its way into a world trade worth over $8bn. Moreover, bananas still form a critical part of the economics of many Central American, South American and Caribbean countries.

What distinguished the international banana trade from other fruit and commodity trade is the intensity of its politics and the importance of the major companies involved.

For over a hundred years, the multinationals – currently Chiquita (formerly the United Fruit Company), Dole, and Del Monte – have dominated the trade.

The high level of capital investment and technical expertise required for production, and especially sea transport in specialized vessels, and the important of and ownership - constitute large – but not insuperable – barriers to entry in the industry.

Two factors have also made the international banana trade far more political in its ramifications than other commodities.

The first is the extensive history of involvement by the multinationals with successive national regimes, mainly in American countries.

Not for nothing was the term ‘banana republic’ coined to describe many of the countries in which production was developed.

The second factor is the continuing debate between the multinationals and environmental organizations over the conditions of banana production.
Banana trade

Cavendish Banana

2009-06-03T20:39:00.001-07:00

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

Panama and Sigatoka Disease

2009-05-05T04:15:00.000-07:00

Panama and Sigatoka Disease
Two plant pathogens – popularly known as Panama and Sigatoka disease – have played leading roles in the history of export banana growing in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The significant of two disease varies over time and space.

In the early twentieth century, the fruit companies responded to Panama disease, a soil borne pathogen, by practicing what can be called “shifting plantation agriculture,” abandoning infected soils and removing infrastructure for reuse in areas where the disease was not present.

When Sigatoka appeared in the 1930s banana producers did not have time to run from the airborne fungal pathogen. Instead, United Fruit Company scientists in Honduras devised a capital – and labor intensive control system based on high volume Bordeaux spray (copper sulfate), the costs of which forced small scale growers to abandon the trade.

The farmworkers and other North Coast residents, the fruit companies’ efforts to control the two plant disease epidemics shaped livelihoods in important and long lasting ways.

Although human disease such as malaria have received more scholarly attention, the fungal pathogens that invaded Gros Michel banana plantations have arguably played a larger, albeit indirect role in shaping the daily lives of people in the North Coast’s zonas bananeras.

The historical significance of Panama and Sigatoka diseases cannot be explained entirely in terms of regional agroecological dynamics.

Complex interactions between pathogen, plant host and agroecosystem shaped the epidemics, but so too did the cultural, economic and social processes that gave rise to mass markets for banana in the United States.
Panama and Sigatoka Disease

The Banana Problematic

2009-04-09T03:01:00.001-07:00

The Banana Problematic
Since inception, the banana industry in the Western Hemisphere has been an early example of globalization.

The industry was shaped by the requirements of the fruit itself, some of which do not differ very much from those of other fresh fruits or vegetable commodities.

Other aspects of the industry were unique, however presenting problem to those who sought to grow and market the fruit.

The banana is highly perishable, with just a short period of time between its edible maturation point and the time of spoilage.

Thus, timing is of the utmost importance to the banana industry.

It is essential to harvest the still ripening fruit, transport it to a port facility, load it onto a ship, carry it to markets, complete the ripening process, and transfer it to wholesales and local retailers in a coordinated manner.

The span of time from harvest to consumption is only four to five weeks, during which the banana may have to travel up to fifteen hundred miles by land and form two thousand to six thousand miles by water to reach it market, where its retail shelf life will be no more than five days.

While most major market regions lie in the temperate zones of the world, cultivation of the banana is limited to tropical or subtropical areas that have warm rear round temperature and receive at least sixty inches of rainfall annually.

Therefore the geography of banana production and consumption is determined by the fruit’s need for high levels of efficient organization.

This can take a variety of form. But one thing has always been clear with bananas: it is virtually impossible for independent farmers, operating alone, to exercise sufficient control to ensure the eventual timely delivery of the fruit to the market.

At a minimum, some form of association is needed, if not one or more corporate structures.

This reality contributed to the emergence of the so-called Banana Empire.

The process that ultimately brings bananas into consumers kitchens requires numerous inputs, many especially designed facilities, and an institutional framework.

At a minimum the input needed include plant stock, land, labor, capital, fertilizer, pest control mechanisms and cartons.

The latter three are most affordable when purchased in bulk, which encourages the formation of associations in areas where small scale framing is the norm.

Infrastructure requirements include packing facilities on or near the cultivation site, roads or railroads to link farms to seaports, ships with refrigerated chambers during international voyage.

Institutional needs include agricultural credit, disaster relief, marketing, and research systems, all of which are instrumentals in helping farmers sell their produce, ensuring the survival of the industry.

The research needed to improve pest control technologies and develop disease resistant fruit varieties is also beyond the capacity of individual farmers.

Thus, the production and marketing of bananas is a complex affair.

It requires a coordinated organization framework that links cultivation areas in tropical regions with consumers mostly living in the temperature climate zone.
The Banana Problematic