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A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry [1] – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing them from dessert bananas. The fruit is variable in size, color, and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with ...
Commercial banana production in the United States is relatively limited in scale and economic impact. While Americans eat 26 pounds (12 kg) of bananas per person per year, the vast majority of the fruit is imported from other countries, chiefly Central and South America, where the US has previously occupied areas containing banana plantations, and controlled the importation of bananas via ...
Although bananas have been planted for thousands of years, the development of an intercontinental trade in bananas had to wait for the convergence of three things: modern rapid shipping (steamships), refrigeration, and railroads. These three factors converged in the Caribbean in the 1870s, and would lead to the development of large-scale banana ...
Chiquita Brands International. Entrance façade of the old United Fruit Building at 321 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana. The United Fruit Company (later the United Brands Company) was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas) grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United ...
The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the New World (the Americas) in the Western Hemisphere, and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemisphere, in the late 15th and following centuries. [1]
Banana plantations, as well as growing the fruit, may also package, process, and ship their product directly from the plantation to worldwide markets.Depending on the scope of the operation, a plantation's size may vary from a small family farm operation to a corporate facility encompassing large tracts of land, multiple physical plants, and many employees.
Musa nana Lour. Musa × sapientum var. suaveolens (Blanco) Malag. Musa acuminata is a species of banana native to Southern Asia, its range comprising the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Many of the modern edible dessert bananas are from this species, although some are hybrids with Musa balbisiana. [5]
Musa balbisiana. Original native ranges of the ancestors of modern edible bananas: M. acuminata is shown in green and M. balbisiana in orange. [3] M. liukiuensis (Matsum.) Makino ex Kuroiwa. M. × paradisiaca var. granulosa G.Forst. Musa balbisiana, also known simply as plantain, is a wild-type species of banana.