Domestication, genomics and the future for banana.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Cultivated bananas and plantains are giant herbaceous plants within the genus Musa. They are both sterile and parthenocarpic so the fruit develops without seed. The cultivated hybrids and species are mostly triploid (2n = 3x = 33; a few are diploid or tetraploid), and most have been propagated from mutants found in the wild. With a production of 100 million tons annually, banana is a staple food across the Asian, African and American tropics, with the 15 % that is exported being important to many economies.

Scope

There are well over a thousand domesticated Musa cultivars and their genetic diversity is high, indicating multiple origins from different wild hybrids between two principle ancestral species. However, the difficulty of genetics and sterility of the crop

SUBMITTER: Heslop-Harrison JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2759213 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature