Bananas are grown in mostly monoculture plantations (you won’t find any other plants besides bananas there). Monoculture planting is the reason why the soil goes exhausted and bananas need to be richly fertilized, to have enough nutrients for their growth.
Bananas are the most chemically treated crops used for consumption. Farmers protect them against insect, mold, worms, weed etc. Right after the harvest the green clusters are disinfected and treated with different fungicides.
You’ll be saved all this chemistry if you’d choose bio. Bio bananas are grown in mixed cultures (as it used to be in the past) together with orange trees or coffee plants. This way the soil is not exhausted one-sidedly. Farmers use special spraying based on oil or garlic to protect the plants against diseases.
Growth
A banana is botanically a berry produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa.
It includes dwarfish varieties which reach not more than couple of tens of centimeters and also varieties much more higher (up to 16 meters).
Out of one banana bulb grows a stem that after approximatelly 9-12 months builds a big flower. There will gradually bloom purple-red flowers which open in the evening and have an intoxicating scent on it.
Flowers are later transformed into “finger” fruits when 10 to 20 such fingers grow from one “hand” called a row of fruits. In one bunch we find associated 5 to 20 of these hands.
Once the crop is ripe, the plant will no longer bear fruit.
Varieties
Banana fruit is a sought-after commodity for which the Musa family has been cultivated and variously bred.
In addition to the well-known soft and sweet varieties of bananas (dessert), there are also starchy bananas for cooking.
The original banana fruit contains seeds, so seedless varieties are cultivated and grown the most. These are reproduces by cloning (cuttings, shoots). But they are thus far more prone to diseases.
There are more than 1000 varieties of bananas in the world, the most known of which is Cavendish. It accounts for about 47 percent of global production. Cavendish banana trees are capable of high yields per hectare and at the same time, thanks to their lower stems, they are less prone to environmental damage, such as storms. These plantations are also known for being able to recover quickly from possible natural disasters. In total, about 50 billion tons of these bananas are produces worldwide yearly.
In fact almost all bananas shipped to the US and European markets are Cavendish variety. They are more suitable for international trade in comparison to other varieties because they are more resilient to global travel.
At the same time it is necessary to add that Cavendish has been facing in the last decades the so-called fungal Panamian disease, also known as TR4. Fungicides and fumigants are not yet effective against it.
A similar disease destroyed the entire popular Gros Michael variety in the 1950s. Therefore, scientists around the world have been working for several years to clone a resistant variety with similar characteristics to the Cavendish variety.
Harvest
When bananas start to form on banana trees, the workers immediately slide a plastic cover – a bag on it. The fruits grow under such “caps” that keep them in an environment with constant temperature and humidity and nothing (including insects) has access to them during ripening which lasts for about 11 weeks.
Bananas never reach full ripeness, they are always harvested green (level 2) and it doesn’t matter whether they are intended for export or local sale.
Bananas are harvested today still the same way as they were centuries ago. The collector holding the long handle with the chisel attached at the end approaches the fruit, quickly lifts them in height and cuts them off. A bunch of bananas, which can weigh 20-60 kg, slides on the back of the second picker, which stands next to it.
The second picker carefully transfers it to the cableway, which connects the plantation with the warehouse and packing house. In order not to push the bananas on the cableway, soft shields are inserted between the individual bunches. In the warehouse, the fruits are then divided into smaller parts, thrown into tanks with a special liquid for disinfection and long-term preservation.
Later on the banana bunches are wrapped in polyethylene and placed in shipping cartons. In this way, they most often travel by sea to other countries. The trunk from which the fruit was cut will die, but the root system will drive out new shoots. The whole harvesting process takes only a few hours, as it is very important that the bananas start their journey as soon as possible.
The cycle from a small shoot to a bunch of bananas lasts 9-12 months. However, bananas do not have a season. They grow, bloom and ripen continuously throughout the year.
Where are produced
Despite the fact that bananas are imported to Slovakia mainly from the countries of South and Latin America and Africa, the world’s largest producers of bananas are Asian countries. Most bananas are produced in India, China and the Philippines, but production in these countries is mainly for domestic consumption. Only in fourth place is Ecuador, from where bananas are imported to us.
Africa
Bananas that come from Africa are imported to us mainly from Ghana, Cameroon or Côte d’Ivoire.
South and Latin America
The largest importers of bananas from this area are Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico.
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