Healthy Fruit Banana

The banana is an edible fruit, botanically a berry, produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called plantains. Worldwide, there is no sharp distinction between  bananas and "plantains". Especially in the Americas and Europe, banana usually refers to soft, sweet, dessert bananas, particularly those of the Cavendish group, which are the main exports from banana-growing countries. By contrast, Musa cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called  plantains. In other regions, such as Southeast Asia, many more kinds of banana are grown and eaten, so the simple twofold distinction is not useful and is not made in local languages.

The term  banana is also used as the common name for the plants which produce the fruit. This can extend to other members of the genus Musa like the scarlet banana, pink banana and the Fe'i bananas. It can also refer to members of the genus Ensete, like the snow banana  and the economically important false banana. Both genera are classified under the banana family, Musaceae.

The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant. All the above-ground parts of a banana plant grow from a structure usually called a corm. Plants are normally tall and fairly sturdy, and are often mistaken for trees, but what appears to be a trunk is actually a false stem or pseudostem. Bananas grow in a wide variety of soils, as long as the soil is at least 60 cm deep, has good drainage and is not compacted. The leaves of banana plants are composed of a stalk and a blade. 

The base of the petiole widens to form a sheath; the tightly packed sheaths make up the pseudostem, which is all that supports the plant. The edges of the sheath meet when it is first produced, making it tubular. As new growth occurs in the centre of the pseudostem the edges are forced apart. Cultivated banana plants vary in height depending on the variety and growing conditions. Most are around 5 m  tall, with a range from 'Dwarf Cavendish' plants at around 3 m  to 'Gros Michel' at 7 m or more. Leaves are spirally arranged and may grow 2.7 metres long and 60 cm  wide. They are easily torn by the wind, resulting in the familiar frond look. An alternative approach divides bananas into dessert bananas and cooking bananas, with plantains being one of the subgroups of cooking bananas. 

 

Triploid cultivars derived solely from M. acuminata are examples of "dessert bananas", whereas triploid cultivars derived from the hybrid between M. acuminata and M. balbinosa  are plantains. Small farmers in Colombia grow a much wider range of cultivars than large commercial plantations. A study of these cultivars showed that they could be placed into at least three groups based on their characteristics: dessert bananas, non-plantain cooking bananas, and plantains, although there were overlaps between dessert and cooking bananas. Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea. They are grown in at least 107 countries, primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make fiber, banana wine and banana beer and as ornamental plants.