Prior to human intervention, 'bananas' were small with tons of seeds.

And that intervention was just an accidental discovery. Someone thousands of years ago stumbled onto a freak plant with no seeds and had the foresight to take a cutting of it. Every banana that has ever existed has been a clone of that one plant. Every so often, a new mutation occurs that gives us a new variety, but they all trace back to that one plant. It is the most extreme type of monoculture and is constantly threatened by parasites like the Panama Disease, because if one plant is vulnerable, they all are.

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chongli a day ago | parent | next [-]

And that intervention was just an accidental discovery. Someone thousands of years ago stumbled onto a freak plant with no seeds and had the foresight to take a cutting of it.

I don't think so. There are a ton of varieties of banana that are grown from seed. Humans have cultivated them and selectively bred them from seed for thousands of years, just like every other plant. The seedless bananas that dominate western grocery stores are 1 variety, Cavendish, that have been endlessly cloned from cuttings. They weren't the first seedless variety commercially available, they were preceded by Gros Michel. But either way, travel to southeast Asia and you'll find a lot more varieties on sale.

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inigyou a day ago | parent | next [-]

Interestingly, apparently the Gros Michel banana (which you can still get, if you try hard enough) tastes much more like artificial banana flavor, because that was the dominant variety when the flavor was developed.

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daedrdev a day ago | parent | next [-]

Its simply a cost thing as the majority of gros michel bannana plants in areas with the fungus will die every few years as infection takes that long, and most areas gained the fungus during the peak of gros miachel cultivation. But at a small scale you can avoid the fungus or just plant new plants when the fungus takes hold, its just more expensive and limited in scale.

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akovaski a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Actually, possibly not. https://youtu.be/I9ZtvpBoXzI

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userbinator 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It just has more isoamyl acetate, which is what artificial banana flavoring uses.

	▲	inigyou 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Which it uses because it bananas at the time had lots of it

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justaman123 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I keep on hearing this fact but I haven't tasted Gros Michel so I don't know. Fact or factoid who knows

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Nursie a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed, and there are unrelated bananas like the Fe’i which are also seedless, pointing to repeated cultivation to a seedless state by people.

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arjie a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where does this nonsensical urban legend come from? Any South Asian market has various genomes that do not descend from that. It has to be the most widely-spread confidently-incorrect claim.

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morkalork a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Naval oranges are all clones from a single mutant tree too

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pvaldes a day ago | parent | next [-]

Navel, This oranges have a "belly button"

Naval is for ships.

	▲	account42 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well the oranges might float, making them naval.

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TylerE 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Similarly, all apple varieties are propagated like this.

Apple cultivars are not genetic. If you plant seeds, you're going to get some random apples, which probably aren't very good. The cultivars are all produced via cuttings.