- Linneaus borrowed an Arabic word, mauz, and adapted it as Musa, the taxonomic genus for the fruit.
- Banana Name comes from Arabic word for fingers, ‘banan’
- Bananas feed millions of people
- It is the 4th largest product grown overall after wheat, rice and corn.
- There are dozens of wild varieties, some no bigger than a pinky finger
- Earliest plant to be cultivated was farmed more than 7,000 years ago
- Banana tree is not a tree, it is a HERB
- Fruit is a GIANT BERRY
- Variety we eat today is the CAVENDISH
- Commercial miracle
- Surpassed the apple despite it being a tropical product that rots easily and that it has to be shipped a thousand miles away
- Skin protects the banana while its being shipped
- Today we used controlled atmosphere and built in refrigeration to delay ripening.
- All ripen at the same rate in almost exactly 7 days
- Incredibly consistent and reliable
- Bananas have no seeds
- Banana we eat today never reproduce on their own
- Fruit is grown through cloning by taking a cut of it and replanting it somewhere else, therefore all the bananas are genetic replicas of each other.
- This is what happened to the Gros Michel so a new banana had to be chosen last second, one that was resistant to the Panama Disease