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The banana defender has logged on. That photo is ’shopped. There is a real cultivar called ‘Blue Java’ that does produce blueish bananas. They can look like this:  They can also look only as blue as this:  Nearly all of the plants sold as ‘Blue Java’ in the United States are actually an unrelated cultivar because a wholesaler mixed them up and retailers pass on the bad identification. I think that variety, ‘Namwah’, is the one in the ’shopped photo. It’s a fine banana in its own right. Neither of them taste at all like vanilla ice cream to my palate. If you’re ever in a market in a tropical area, do try some of the local bananas. They may not taste like vanilla ice cream, but they also do not taste like the supermarket variety, ‘Cavendish’. ‘Cavendish’ itself may not be on the shelves forever. Up to a quarter of banana growers’ expenses go toward controlling the black sigatoka fungus. Organic farmers spend even more money slashing and burning virgin rainforest to create a temporarily sterile environment in which they can grow an Organic® crop. Once the fungus inevitably moves in, they spray shiploads of fungicide everywhere, give up their organic certification on the property, and cut down more rainforest elsewhere to meet the demand for ~organic~ nanners. At farmer’s markets, you might also find the ‘Gros Michel’, the banana that launched a thousand coups. Many people think it’s extinct, but it’s not. It is no longer the foundation of the banana republic, but it is still grown on a decent scale in Southeast Asia and on small farms throughout the tropics.
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Feb 12, 2020 11:15
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 01:48 |
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eSports Chaebol posted:Eat bananas while you can. We grow them by clones and have aggressively artificially selected them so there’s only like a dozen genomes left in the entire banana gene pool There are over two thousand known varieties. A university in Belgium hosts a collection of sixteen hundred. https://twitter.com/CropTrust/status/1227259508453519366
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Feb 12, 2020 23:19
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Daikloktos posted:I enjoyed the whole post of course, but especially this since I only understood slash and burn farming from the fertilization angle. To continue to be totally out of my depth, exactly how far-off science fiction is genetic companies cracking fungus-resistant bananas? Is that the sort of thing that might conceivably happen in my lifetime? The idea that companies will develope fungus‐resistant bananas is fiction, but not for the reason you think. First let’s talk about banana genetics. The joke about bananas is that they haven’t had sex for ten thousand years. There is a kernel (that’s a pun) of truth to that. Edible cultivars are sterile, almost by definition. ‘Gros Michel’ could not be bred with ‘Cavendish’ to get something that’s resistant to Panama disease. However, the forebears of edible bananas were not sterile. We can go to the wild relatives of the domestic banana, breed within each species for fungus resistance, cross two species to get a seedless hybrid, and see how it performs. We’re not modifying a known tasty variety to be resistant to fungus; we’re pulling a slot machine handle and hoping to get something that tastes good and grows well. Sexual reproduction is great, but there is another way. Clones can diverge through mutations. This can be accelerated with the atomic gardening that gave us the ruby red grapefruit (no, really), but it happens through the centuries regardless. At around the time the (western) Roman Empire was a going concern, someone in the area of the African Great Lakes obtained a single banana plant. In the centuries since, bananas have flourished in the region. There are now some two hundred cultivars. The majority are picked green and prepared somewhat like a potato, steamed and mashed. There are at least a dozen cultivars that are specialised for beer‐making, the banana equivalent of cider apples. Ugandans eat a quarter tonne of bananas per person per year.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sK2MStmxWM Here is what it looks like to make banana beer the traditional way. It’s more fun. Despite the great culinary diversity displayed by East African highland bananas (EAHB), they remain extremely close genetically. Threats to the West’s favourite snack the Cavendish get all the press, but an epidemic in East African highland bananas could be this century’s potato famine. Scientists in Uganda are working on diversifying EAHBs by finding fertile mutants. quote:The highest pollination success for the EAHB cultivars was expressed by cultivar “Nakabululu” (34.3%) (Nakabululu clone set) with an average of 1.5 seeds per pollinated bunch To be clear, a “bunch” of bananas is the entire crop of one plant, not the “hand” they’re broken into at retail. So it’s like finding a needle in a haystack even with the best candidates.  Uganda isn’t the only nation reliant on bananas. Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, China, India, Indonesia, the United States, France (in Guadeloupe), Brazil, and Honduras also have breeding programmes. So why did I say that companies weren’t going to create fungus‐resistant bananas? Simple: these are all national efforts. Let’s ask the big fruit companies what they think about research and development. David McLaughlin, Chiquita’s senior director for environmental affairs said in 2003, “We supported a breeding program for forty years, but it wasn’t able to develop an alternative to Cavendish. It was very expensive and we got nothing back.” concluding “We concentrate on research into fungicides now.” Oh dear. Since then, they’ve backpedaled a little. quote:“We never left traditional breeding,” a spokesman for Chiquita told me. “In our core markets, in America and Europe, a genetically modified banana would never be marketable. At the end of the day, we’re interested in continuing to sell bananas.” Jorge Gonzales, Dole’s senior vice-president of agricultural research, said, “Traditional breeding is getting closer. This may be a shot in the dark, but if you don’t take the shot you’ve got absolutely zero chance of hitting the target.” Chiquita may say they “never left traditional breeding” but they did sell their program to the government of Honduras. It has since had success. Their first public release was FHIA‐01 ‘Goldfinger’. Some people think this will be the heir to Cavendish.  There are several contenders. FHIA‐17 has ‘Gros Michel’ for a parent. Another way forward is genetic modification. This is faster than breeding and produces more consistent results, but like the Chiquita guy said, it spooks Western consumers. There is still a way to use modern biotech in a limited way by breeding bananas the old fashioned way, then looking at their genes and seeing how they turned out in important areas. This saves a lot of time over putting seeds in the ground and waiting till they mature. It was incredibly stupid for the big fruit companies to shutter their breeding programmes. Ugandans cannot afford to be so precious about their food. They’re genetically modifying bananas to be a better source of vitamin A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUUpi7LHBbc There is western‐funded opposition to GMOs, but it’s tough to argue against “not going blind”. Here’s a trial of a fungus‐resistant strain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1TvpXKplns They are using genetic modification to protect the crop they need to survive. The great threats to the West’s favourite fruit are, in the final sense, ignorance and greed. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Feb 13, 2020 |
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Feb 13, 2020 09:50
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A banana blossom has a more traditional shape than the fruit.  That may look like a flared base, but the “petals” (actually modified leaves) at the base are too flexible and would fold back readily. You’d have to leave it attached to the banana bunch for safety. 
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Feb 17, 2020 00:47
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Dreylad posted:I really need to do some more research about all the crops government programs have produced, I know in Canada our federal experimental farms have developed a lot of cold-resistant cereal crops. I'm guessing that most of the poo poo we rely on to sustain ourselves were spun out of government research because capital would never be willing to take on that kind of risk, go figure The University of Saskatchewan has a good fruit program, which started in an interesting way. quote:As director of the Dominion of Canada’s Forestry Farm in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Les Kerr’s primary job was to develop ornamental and disease-free trees and shrubs to be used as bird habitat and wind breaks. But in 1944, Les Kerr got sidetracked by cherries. Their haskap program is also the envy of the world, as far as those things go. They’re not going to solve world hunger, but I it’s good that someone is working on crops like these. It’s not good if monoculture fruits grown in epic scale strangle everything else. Even in Japan, which has relatively strong agricultural protectionism, American imports are pushing out Japanese citrus.  Haskap  This has been described as “like someone asked Georgia O'Keeffe to paint a blueberry bush”.
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Feb 17, 2020 08:15
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T-man posted:Banana question: I've done some cursory looking into plant factories and other climate-independent growing methods. How can or should we grow bananas locally or in post-climate change hell world? The good news is that bananas aren’t too picky about climate. As long as it doesn’t get too cold, they’re O.K.. They’re not like some other plants that are overly sensitive to heat or require particular humidity or seasonal variation*. They’ll just keep growing. It’s already possible to fruit bananas outdoors in places as strange as San Francisco. With climate change, bananas will grow a little farther north.  Climate destabilisation will of course cause a net loss of productivity, but many other crops will fare worse. *There’s an exception in fe‘i bananas. Pacific islanders domesticated an entirely different species of banana than the one that spread everywhere else. Fe‘i bananas grow well in the tropical highlands and nowhere else. Colonialism hit them hard and now climate change threatens. The banana belt will be pushed farther up the mountains, possibly disappearing entirely. T-man posted:Follow-up question: can you make exploding bananas like in SS13 We’ll be stretching the words “exploding bananas”, but yeah. Gram for gram, dried bananas have three times the energy of TNT. It is, however, more difficult to quickly release the energy in a banana. What it would take to make an explosion is grinding dried bananas into a fine powder, suspended that powder in the air, and lighting it. Such explosions have happened in facilities where flammable powders are present, including sugar, starch, coal, sawdust, and metals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7mLSG-Yws Thermobaric weapons are a packaged version of the same phenomenon, delivering a flammable powder to the target, dispersing it into the air, and igniting the cloud. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 12:56
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Jasus Christ posted:Follow-up question for the wider thread, could we breed bananas that have grooves on the outside of the peel that fit my fingers even more perfectly, so I don't lose my grip when I hold them while running? I don’t know of any fluted or chequered bananas, but there some weird shapes out there.   ‘Pitogo’ has little spherical fruits.   Fruits of the ‘Praying Hands’ cultivar have their peels all fused together.
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Feb 19, 2020 12:13
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Meredith Baxter-Burnout posted:gently caress walnuts. “Walnut” in Latin is juglans. “Ju”– referring to the chief god Jupiter and “glans” meaning, well, “glans”. Walnuts are Jupiter’s dickhead. If you dig deeper, you will be disappointed. Anatomy referenced botany and not vice versa. “Glans” meant “acorn” before it was used to refer to the head of the penis. Walnuts are just godly acorns.
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Feb 19, 2020 16:53
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xrunner posted:They should rename it banana flavored walnut bread. I know it’s longer but that would hopefully make idiots stop making it without the walnuts. Too many people do this This is true. Here is the recipe I use. I transcribed it just now, so let me know if anything seems off. Ingredients All‐purpose flour: 250 g (2 cups) Baking soda: 5 g (1 tsp) Baking powder: 4 g (1 tsp) Salt: 6 g (1 tsp koshering salt) Cinnamon: 2 g (¾ tsp). Worth grating from sticks. Eggs: 2, large Bananas, overripe: 500 g (4 Cavendish bananas) Granulated white sugar: 200 g (1 cup) Vanilla extract: 4 g (5 ml or 1 tsp) Butter: 100 g (½ cup or 1 stick) Walnuts: at least 50 g (½ cup when chopped) I mix in more at the end till I like the look of it and have never recorded how much that amounts to, perhaps double. Chocolate chips (optional): 50 g or as desired Oil of choice to grease the pan Procedure Preheat oven to 180 °C (350°F) Stir flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside. Whisk eggs in large, flat‐bottomed bowl. Add bananas to eggs, mash. Add sugar and vanilla. Stir in melted butter. Add dry ingredients. Stir. Add chopped walnuts, and, if desired, chocolate chips. Stir. Pour batter into greased pan. 10 cm × 20 cm or 4 in. × 8 in. is good. Bake for 70 minutes, or till toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Do not undercook. It’s the easiest way to ruin it.
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Feb 23, 2020 13:46
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 01:48 |
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Everyone loves the factoid that ‘avocado’ means ‘testicle’. The truth is that the word was used for both the fruit and the body part long before the Spanish arrived. We cannot untangle the etymology and say which usage came first. ‘Orchid’ did come from the Latin for ‘testicle’. Nice one, Victorian botanists. The second great factoid about the avocado is that they used to be spread by extinct megafauna and would have followed those megafauna into extinction. Doubtful. Wild avocados can be found looking like this:  Those are easily spread by birds. There is no need to invoke giant sloths. The theory may apply to papaya, where we know that wild specimens are very large.
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Feb 23, 2020 14:57
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