Despite the current, clear understanding of its ancestry, the edible bananas' origins are often confused in the literature. Women selling fruit of Dwarf Cavendish AAA and Pisang awak ABB in a market in Karonga, Malawi, East Africa. The lower photograph shows preparation of male buds of Pisang awak for cooking in a market in Sungai Kolok, Thailand. For many of the world s poorest people, banana is a nutritious and important staple food. Click images for enlargement.
Banana is now one of the most popular of all fruits.
Although it is viewed as only a dessert or an addition to breakfast cereal in most developed countries, it is actually a very important agricultural product. After rice, wheat and milk, it is the fourth most valuable food. Much of the remaining harvest is consumed by poor subsistence farmers in tropical Africa, America and Asia. This photograph shows seed-packed fruit of Musa balbisiana , one of the ancestors of the edible bananas. Since the edible cultivars are parthenocarpic and often female or male sterile, seeds are rarely found in their fruit.