Bananas and People in the Homeland of Genus Musa: Not just pretty fruit
By J. Kennedy. 2009
83 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Bananas, perhaps the most recognisable of fruits, are nowhere more genetically diverse than in the southwest Pacific, where parthenocarpic fruit originated according to recent biomolecular evidence. In the wider Indo-Malesian area, homeland of the genus Musa L., understanding the domestication of bananas must include consideration of a much greater range of Musa species than just the few implicated in the parentage of the modern cultivars with seedless fruit. Despite ethnobotanical evidence that the genus has been valued for many more products than the edible fruit, the role of other products in the process of domestication is seldom considered. As well as documenting the development and spread of seedless cultivars, we need to develop models of the fundamental Indo-Malesian practices through which the greater range of species and products, seeds and all, were managed in diverse socio-cultural and environmental circumstances.
Subfields: Plant Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/90c1175b9f3a3ef17df275643eab45bbdd2f7c93
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In Plant Science
Citations in the corpus
- A historical overview of the appearance and spread of Musa pests and pathogens on the African continent: highlighting the importance of clean Musa planting materials and quarantine measures (2013, background): “Domestication was probably initiated by human management of selected wild subspecies of Musa acuminata (AA genome) (Kennedy, 2009) and continued via vegetative propagation and the natural crossing of cultivated plants grown in close proximity to various genotypes of M.”
- Why Bananas Matter: An introduction to the history of banana domestication (2009, background): “Jean Kennedy (2009) provides an ethnobotanical overview of the use of bananas within traditional societies to show that Musa bananas have not been used, or presumably domesticated, solely for food.”