Amazing stuff!
"... An extensive genetic analysis of more than 100 varieties of wild and cultivated bananas unpeels the fruit’s tangled history of domestication and reveals the existence of three previously unknown—and possibly still living—ancestors. ...
About 7000 years ago, bananas were not the seedless, fleshy fruits we know today. The flesh was pitted with black seeds and nearly inedible. Instead, people ate the banana tree’s flowers or its underground tubers. ...
Scientists do know the banana’s predominant wild ancestor is a species named Musa acuminata, which occurs from India to Australia. Most researchers agree that Papua New Guinea is where domesticated bananas as we know them first appeared. Today, there are many banana varieties—more than 1000 at last count. ...
Complicating matters, some bananas have the usual two sets of chromosomes, whereas others have three sets or more, suggesting at least some modern bananas are hybrids that resulted from the interbreeding of two or more varieties, or even different species. ...
There’s good reason to try to tap into the modern banana’s deep historical gene pool: The $8 billion banana industry, which produces 100 billion bananas annually, is threatened by diseases such as Panama disease and banana bacterial wilt. ..."
About 7000 years ago, bananas were not the seedless, fleshy fruits we know today. The flesh was pitted with black seeds and nearly inedible. Instead, people ate the banana tree’s flowers or its underground tubers. ...
Scientists do know the banana’s predominant wild ancestor is a species named Musa acuminata, which occurs from India to Australia. Most researchers agree that Papua New Guinea is where domesticated bananas as we know them first appeared. Today, there are many banana varieties—more than 1000 at last count. ...
Complicating matters, some bananas have the usual two sets of chromosomes, whereas others have three sets or more, suggesting at least some modern bananas are hybrids that resulted from the interbreeding of two or more varieties, or even different species. ...
There’s good reason to try to tap into the modern banana’s deep historical gene pool: The $8 billion banana industry, which produces 100 billion bananas annually, is threatened by diseases such as Panama disease and banana bacterial wilt. ..."
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