The banana

Despite its size, the banana plant is not a tree but a herb, the technical definition of which is a non-woody, seed-bearing plant which dies down to the ground after flowering. Suckers spring up around the main plant, the oldest sucker replacing the main plant when it dies after producing fruit, a process that continues indefinitely. Because of this continuous reproduction, the banana plant is regarded by Hindus as a symbol of fertility and prosperity, and the leaves and fruit are deposited on doorsteps of houses where marriages are taking place.
In the islands of the South Pacific, unripe bananas are baked whole, sometimes unpeeled, on hot stones, or peeled and wrapped in banana leaves, then baked in an oven. Ripe bananas are mashed with coconut cream and served as a thick and fragrant drink. In Costa Rica, ripe bananas are peeled and left to simmer for hours to make a thick syrup which is called ‘honey’. Green bananas, boiled in their skins, are popular in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. In Ghana, pancakes are made from very ripe bananas and fermented maize dough, mixed with onions and seasoned with ginger, pepper and salt. These pancakes are fried in palm oil. The same mixture is also rolled into balls, which are deep-fried. Green bananas are boiled and eaten with stews. Banana flour is made by sun-drying slices of unripe banana and then pulverising them. The flour is then mixed 50-50 with wheat flour.

A bunch of bananas is made up of several ‘hands’, which are the little bunches that you can buy at the greengrocer. They develop from the female flower and turn under their own weight as they grow, until they are hanging upside down.

There are many kinds of banana plant, several of which are grown only for ornamental reasons, or for their fibre, which is used to make textiles. The banana plants which produce the seedless, edible fruit belong to the species M. acuminate Colla. This species was developed from the wild banana, which produces fruit that is packed solid with hard black seeds, leaving little room for flesh. The edible banana originated in the islands of today’s Malaysia and Indonesia, probably when a ‘freak’ banana – a sterile, seedless mutant - was found, and its suckers were taken to produce new plants that bore this mutant but edible fruit. The plant reached Africa not more than a thousand years ago, taken there by the Malay-Polynesian peoples who settled in Madagascar, and by Arab and Indian traders who settled in East Africa. The Bantu people who came to dominate the central and southern part of Africa spread knowledge of banana cultivation throughout the continent. Banana plantations are now particularly common around the African Great Lakes, and in the Ivory Coast and Somalia.

Bananas are also dried in a manner similar to that used for drying figs. They are peeled when ripe but firm, split along their length, sulphured, and then dried in an oven. They are packed for sale, and eaten as a snack or finely chopped and mixed with candied fruit in cakes. Brazil produces dehydrated banana flakes for domestic consumption and for export to the USA. They are used mainly in cereal and curries.

The Portuguese carried the banana plant to the Canary Islands in the 15th century, and thence to the Portuguese colonies in south and central America, where climatic conditions allowed for the creation of great banana plantations, and there the fruit became a staple food. The word ‘banana’ is supposed to have entered the language via the Spanish and Portuguese corruption of the name for the fruit in Guinea.

To North Americans, the banana remained an exoticism until the late 19th century – and even longer than that to Europeans, who were so much farther away from the plantations. Without refrigeration, they could not be transported for great distances before going bad. Several studio photographs survive of well-to-do North Americans dressed in the manner of the late 19th century, posing in the act of eating what was probably their first banana. It was considered so momentous an occasion that it was recorded for posterity. It was during this period that the United Fruit Company, which even today is a leading player in the world banana market was born. At the turn of the 20th century, the company which went on to become Standard Fruit, another leading player, was set up by three brothers of Italian origin – Joseph, Felix and Luca Vaccaro, together with their brother-in-law Salvatore D’Antoni - who lived in New Orleans.

The new shoots of young banana plants are cooked and eaten as greens in India, and are even canned with potatoes and tomatoes in a curry sauce. Also in India, a solution of the ash of burned banana leaves and stems is used to season vegetable curries. The male flower bud of the banana plant is used in curries in Malaya and cooked and eaten with palm oil in West Africa.

Bananas are grown today in every tropical region, and are the fourth largest fruit crop in the world, after the grape (which is grown mainly for wine-making), citrus fruits, and the apple. World production of bananas is estimated at 28 million tonnes: 67% in Latin America, 27% in South-East Asia, and 7% in Africa. India is Asia’s leading banana producer, but most of its crop is eaten within its borders. Brazil is the leading grower in South America, but again, most of its crop is eaten there. Large-scale commercial growing of bananas for export to North America is mainly carried out in the Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica.

Bananas leech huge amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus out of the soil in which they grow, depleting it and making necessary intensive fertilisation. Even with heavy fertilisation and the best management, a banana plantation will not produce fruit for longer than 25 years.

Banana leaves are used widely as plates on which food is served, to wrap food for baking (in the same way that we might use aluminium foil or baking-paper) and to line cooking-pits. In the Philippines, banana fibre is woven into thin fabric called agna, which is used to make clothes, floor covering, ropes, and even paper. Dried banana peel, because of its high tannin content, is used to darken leather. The ash from the dried peel of bananas is rich in potash and is used for making basic soap.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) regards bananas as the fourth most important food crop in the world, after wheat, rice and maize. For around 400 million people in the tropical region, the banana is a staple food. Around 80% of the world’s banana crop is grown on small farms and eaten locally. The export trade for the remaining 10% is worth a staggering $5 billion each year.

Malta imports 7000 tonnes of bananas every year. At around 20kg per capita, this makes the Maltese among the greatest consumers of bananas in Europe. Bananas can be grown in Malta, but they need plenty of watering and complete shelter from the wind, which shreds the leaves and interferes with the metabolism of the plant. Commercial growing of bananas in Malta is therefore out of the question. Devastating cyclones and hurricanes were the main reason that large-scale banana production was shifted from the West Indies to Central America, Columbia and Ecuador.

Plaintains are a type of banana, chunkier and better for cooking. They are larger than the ordinary banana, and rather than being smooth round their circumference, they have four angles. The words ‘banana’ and ‘plaintain’ are used interchangeably for the same fruit in different languages. Plaintains are the fruit of the Musa paradisiacal. They are more starchy than sweet, and are a staple food in much of Africa, where they are served boiled, baked, steamed or fried. Plaintains grilled over a charcoal fire are a popular street food in many sub-Saharan African cities.

Because the domestic banana has no seeds, it is extremely difficult to breed new varieties that are more resistant to disease. Existing banana plants are clones of each other, which means that they go down like skittles when a plantation is afflicted by pests or infection. The most devastating banana disease, which has wiped out whole plantations, is Panama Disease, which started spreading in Taiwan in the 1960s. It is the result of infection by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, which starts out in the soil, travels to the secondary roots, enters the plant corm through fresh injuries, and then travels through the plant, turning leaving yellow to bronze. Panama Disease has seriously affected banana production in Central America, Colombia, and the Canary Islands.

This recipe comes from Living off the Country, a cook-book published in Nigeria in 1942, to help Europeans who were living in Africa: “Banana chips (a substitute for potato chips with fried fish) – Peel green bananas and slice lengthways or crossways as desired. Sprinkle with pepper and salt and fry up quickly in fat or lard. Pile on a dish and serve immediately.”

Up to the 1950s, commercial plantations grew only one type of banana, the Gros Michel. Today, the main banana type is the Cavendish. Older people who remember bananas as tasting better in their youth than they do today are correct: the Gros Michel was richer and tastier. It continues to be grown in the more remote parts of Jamaica and Uganda, but everywhere else it was wiped out completely by Panama Disease. This caused wholesale economic devastation for the commercial plantations that fed the export trade – and yes, there were no bananas. In 1992, Panama Disease mutated to a form that is able to attack the Cavendish banana, destroying entire plantations in Malaysia. The disease has since remained confined to Asia, but it is only a matter of time before it reaches the Cavendish banana plantations of Latin America and the Caribbean.

There were no bananas in Europe and North America during World War II because the ships of the banana companies were requisitioned by the British and American governments to aid the war effort.

Serious efforts are being made to develop disease-resistant bananas. The Catholic University of Leuven is home to the world’s greatest collection of banana samples. Over the past 20 years, it has carefully collected some 1,175 different kinds of banana plant, which it nurtures in test-tubes. The plants outgrow their in vitro storage rapidly, and have to be laboriously cut back every month. Researchers at the university have developed ways to deep-freeze the banana samples: five years of plunging them into liquid nitrogen, and then banana cells can be recovered and turned into growing plants. The most successful methods for improving the banana through genetic engineering depend on these cell suspensions. The researchers hope that cryo-preservation (freezing them at extremely low temperatures) will keep them more or less indefinitely. The Catholic University of Leuven is training scientists from developing countries in these techniques.

Surprisingly – or perhaps not – China is one of the most important banana producing countries in the world. In 1964 it exported 400,000 tonnes of bananas, but its production stagnated for the next 20 years. Then in 1985 it began to pick up rapidly, growing from production of half a million tonnes in 1994 to 5.6 million tonnes in 2002. The Chinese also began to eat more and more bananas in this period: all the country’s production and then some. China is now a net importer of bananas, despite its massive production of them. However, the rate of production will, within a few years, catch up with, and eventually overtake, the rate of domestic consumption, and China will become a net exporter of bananas once more.

Grilling in the Philippines