''Musa balbisiana'', also known simply as plantain, is a wild-type species of banana. It is one of the ancestors of modern cultivated bananas, along with '' Musa acuminata''.

Description

It grows lush leaves in clumps with a more upright habit than most cultivated bananas. Flowers grow in

inflorescence In botany, an inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a plant's Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a mai ...

s coloured red to maroon. The fruit are between blue and green. They are considered inedible because of the seeds they contain.

Taxonomy

It was first scientifically described in 1820 by the Italian botanist Luigi Aloysius Colla.

Distribution

It is native to eastern

South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

, the eastern regions of the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...

, northern

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

, and southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Introduced populations exist in the wild, far outside its native range.

Uses

It is assumed that wild bananas were cooked and eaten, as farmers would not have developed the cultivated banana otherwise. Seeded ''Musa balbisiana'' fruit are called ''butuhan'' ('with seeds') in the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

, and ''kluai tani'' (กล้วยตานี) in

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

, where its leaves are used for packaging and crafts. Natural parthenocarpic clones occur through polyploidy and produce edible bananas, examples of which are wild saba bananas.

Genome

''Musa balbisiana'' contributed the B genome to the cultivated banana. Wang ''et al.'', 2019 provides a genome,

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

ary analysis and functional genomics analysis. Wang ''et al.'' find evolution increasing ethylene production in the domesticated form. : : :This review cites this research. : :

References

External links

Musa balbisiana
balbisiana Plants described in 1820 Austronesian agriculture {{Fruit-stub