A next generation catalog of cultivated bananas | Hacker News Reader

A next generation catalog of cultivated bananas

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

26 pointsPaulHoule10 comments

Gros Michel was amazing. I have faint childhood memory. Creamier than Cavendish, without the same consequence of an overripe Cav.

Sugar bananas and Ladyfinger have their own place. Indonesians seem to do sugar bananas in a caramel sauce which I hoover up in obscene quantities at hotels. I like both a bit tarter and crisper than a Cavendish.

Banana flour is a digestive miracle high in inulin or inulin producing precursors and keeps my lower gut happy.

Winnowing down to (for the west) basically one sterile cultivar was a huge mistake.

Yeah, there should be more types of bananas. There are already many different kinds of apples, e.g., Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious, Fuji, etc.; I don't see why only one type of banana has to be sold at a time.

Cavendish bananas actually only make up around half of global banana production, however it absolutely dominates banana exports, especially to developed countries.

Basically, this is because cavendish bananas travel well (they are relatively thick skinned, and ripen while traveling reasonably well) while still being reasonably tender and flavourful as a raw fruit (as opposed to other bananas with thick skin that are usually cooked or processed).

The high diversity of apple cultivars available in North America is a combination of basically all apples having relatively sufficient storeability and shipability, as well as the fact that apple trees will happily grow across most of the United States / densely inhabited Canada. They are effectively "domestic". Bananas have a far more limited range in the US (mostly limited to Florida and Haiwaii).

Breeding new strains of banana is also much more challenging than apples since... well, the bananas people want as a raw fruit are seedless. You're working with trying to hybridize populations of clones. This is understandably more challenging than dealing with apples.

IIRC, banana flakes was a common wartime shelf-stable product - I wouldn’t mind it returning.

Where do you buy these different varieties?

Australia gets two of the three in supermarkets and sugar bananas and plantain are in street markets.

"The banana equivalent to Covid-19 is spreading to new countries, forcing the industry to change how the world’s most widely eaten fruit is farmed and even how it could taste." []

[] https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-pande...

Who would've thought that mono-cultures are not a good idea in the long run.

> The banana equivalent to Covid-19

This is a bad comparison given that in that case the disease would only kill a very small percentage - less than 2% - of the population and mostly affect the older and weaker plants after which the rest of the population would develop immunity against the fungus. If this were the case it would not matter at all and we'd be eating Cavendish bananas for a very long time yet. That is not what this fungus does, it has the potential to devastate crops without any significant chance of the development of natural immunity.

It's a bad comparison but what you say is only true if you look at direct deaths - youth doesn't really protect against long covid, and the increase in cardiovascular risks in fact seems to disproportionately affect younger people.

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