Phylloxera

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylloxera

Harvesting Almonds

 On the website of Jim Spanish Almonds I found a movie on  how Almonds are harvested:

The evolution of plants; a natural force for well-being

 The evolution of plants; a natural force for well-being

Botanical research published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution shows how the diversity of benefits that plants provide to humans is the result of evolutionary processes that encompass the entire plant Tree of Life.

The history of human civilizations could not be understood without the plants that have contributed to our well-being so much. Besides many other benefits, we have used them for healing, clothing, feeding, and warming ourselves, building and decorating our homes, and even to convey our feelings. As with everything related to biodiversity, these plant services are nothing more than the result of evolution. For example, the pressure exerted by herbivorous insects on plants has driven the evolution of chemical defences, molecules that form the basis of many insecticides. Other species accumulate reserves that we humans use for our own food, and many of them have extraordinarily eye-catching and fragrant flowers that attract pollinators and gardeners alike. One could say that biological evolution is in effect a force for human good. 

The close relationship between the evolutionary history of plants and their benefits to humans has inspired research led by Dr Molina-Venegas from the University of Alcalá (Spain), which suggests that humans have scoured the entirety of the evolutionary tree of plants (i.e. their entire evolutionary history) in search of the botanical benefits that underpin our well-being.

The authors of the study compiled from the latest edition of Mabberley’s Plant-book (Cambridge University Press, 2017) an extensive database of global plant uses, according to 28 categories related to human and livestock nutrition, fuels, materials, medicines, poisons, social and environmental uses. This analysis enabled the authors to conclude that, in general, selecting plants that have widely different evolutionary histories captures a greater number and diversity of benefits than does a strategy based on random sampling or one limited to prospecting solely close relatives. This can be explained by the fact that plant attributes that benefit humans have evolved throughout the plant Tree of Life.

Although the theoretical foundations of such research were formalized in the early 1990s, recent studies have demonstrated that the empirical evidence supporting the theory was still tenuous, and so even questioned its reliability. In supporting the theory, the work led by Dr Molina-Venegas contributes to filling a gap of knowledge that has fueled intense scientific debate in recent years. The conclusion is now clear: taking into account the evolutionary history of species when setting conservation priorities could be the key to ensuring the maximum beneficial potential of biodiversity for the future of humanity.

Brief biographical sketch of the author:

Rafael graduated in biology at the University of Seville, where he completed his PhD on the evolutionary history of plants in the Baetic-Rifan biodiversity hotspot (Andalusia and Northern Morocco). After postdoctoral studies at the University of Alcalá, he moved to the Institute of Plant Science at the University of Bern (Switzerland), where he investigated the relationship between humans and plant benefits from an evolutionary perspective. In 2019, he returned to the University of Alcalá where he is currently leading his own research project, aimed at exploring connections between plant evolutionary history and human well-being.

For correspondence:contact formulary at https://rafmolven.wixsite.com/rafmolven/contact-me

How did the cranberries arrive in the Netherlands?

A friendly lady from "Dr. Vogel" explained to me that their hand picked berries came from Denmark. However, later she discovered they import them from New Jersey. 

In New Jersey they also use the dry harvesting method. This farmer explains he prefers this method,since it is healthier for his plants not to "drown" them every year.Eventually that is much better for the quality of the fruits.https://theproducenews.com/sunny-valley-expects-high-quality-new-jersey-cranberry-program.

In the Netherlands they also harvest cranberries.No one knows how they got there:

Probably in 1845 a beachcomber found a barrel. He did not like the sour berries, and threw them in the dunes.All caught by the Terschellinger Webcam 😜

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry

No, I think they created this movie for the "Terschellinger Cranberies" Company: https://terschellingercranberries.nl/cranberries/geschiedenis/

The berries were found by Holkema in 1868.

https://www.frieseboekhandel.frl/titels/Franciscus-Holkema-H.C.-van-Hall--De-plantengroei-der-Nederlandsche-Noordzee-eilanden/904/9789066595088.htm

Since Holkema died of tuberculosis, before finishing his book. Professor van Hall finished it for him:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Christiaan_van_Hall

Ericaceae, Cranberries, Harvesting

Cranberries are harvested by flooding he fields. A cranberry has 4 air pockets, so they can  float!

After the flooding, the "Egg Beater" passes by to loosen the berries from the vines.

This method is widely used in New Jersey.

 

Dry harvesting is also used. This farmer explains he uses the dry harvesting, because it keeps his plants healthier and stronger, which results in High Quality Berries.

https://theproducenews.com/sunny-valley-expects-high-quality-new-jersey-cranberry-program

Ericaceae, heidefamilie

De heidefamilie (Ericaceae) is een familie van bedektzadige veelal houtige maar ook kruidachtige planten. De familie komt wereldwijd voor, maar zelden in tropisch laagland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericaceae

veenbes

Vaccinium macrocarpon, veenbes

Vaccinium macrocarpon helpt bij blaasontsteking.

Australian trees growing all over the world

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/australian-trees-growing-all-over-the-world/12974558

Robyn Williams: And so to the final in the series of talks we've had from botanist, Professor David Mabberley, formally from the University of Oxford and the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. This time, how we have massacred the forests ever since Europeans turned up. And land clearing, as you know, has until now given us a get-out-of-jail card in climate accounting of emissions.

David Mabberley: The establishment of a British prison camp in Port Jackson in 1788, today's Sydney, as well-planned along European lines as it had been, was followed by a major problem for the fledgling white New South Wales, namely it imported more than it exported. For example, in 1811-12, merchandise imported from Calcutta was almost 20 times as valuable as exports to India. The search for goods for the Indian and Chinese markets led to coal being first sent to India in 1799, but timber helped too. Red cedar was sent as early as 1795, and oak, probably she-oak, by 1803.

The British Admiralty ordered that empty convict transports returning to England should carry cedar and other timbers. As early as 1795, there were government attempts to control cedar getting. The first organised fellings in the Hunter Valley where in 1801. The best cedar, resembling Honduras mahogany, was considered to be that from the Hunter. It was used for doors, window frames, furniture, coffins, for boat building and light vehicles and even for the panelling in Sydney's trams. Red cedar trees to 60 metres tall were formally plentiful on the alluvial flats of the larger rivers of New South Wales.

In 1829 a Scottish journalist Robert Mudie wrote prophetically of it as 'the most esteemed timber and would probably continue so until the forest be exhausted.' In fact it was almost entirely worked out, and today stands survive only in scattered remote localities in New South Wales and Queensland.

More pervasive in Australia are the eucalypts or gum trees, a term coined by Joseph Banks. According to government records, in 2013, eucalypts made up three-quarters of Australia's forests and woodlands, 92 million hectares. The first eucalypt to be grown out doors in Europe was a swamp mahogany, Eucalyptus robusta. It was planted north of Naples in Italy in 1792 and was being grown under glass in New York by 1811. In 1827 it was noted of Sydney blue gum, Eucalyptus saligna, that large quantities of it had been exported to England in the shape of plank, and that it was used locally in ship building, beams in houses, furniture and fence posts. By the 1860s, eucalypts were being used for paper production, for which their fibres are well suited.

Of the 800 or more eucalypt species in Australia, over 200 have been established in cultivation elsewhere. The tallest planted trees in the southern hemisphere are Sydney blue gums, planted in South Africa in 1906. They are also the tallest of all trees in all of Africa.

Blue gum, Eucalyptus globulus, a Tasmanian species extending to Victoria, has had the greatest global impact, reaching Africa in 1828 as nine seedlings via Mauritius. Blue gums are usually planted for paper pulp, and the timber is used in construction and charcoal making, but they have become invasive in many countries. They were introduced to California in the 1850s with the gold rush, and large-scale plantings began in the 1870s. In the 1860s, trees were established in Portugal and likely in Spain, even before that. The landscape of these countries, as also of much of North Africa, India, the eastern Mediterranean where they were planted to drain malarial swamps, Madagascar, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador has been transformed, though eucalypt plantings in Ecuador at least have removed pressure on native forests for firewood.

Blue gum is very successful in Africa at high elevations, as in Ethiopia, which had 250,000 hectares of it by 1993 contributing to Africa's total of 1,636,000 hectares, approaching double the area of natural stands in Australia. The very productive plantations used as a source of fuel enabled the first permanent capital, Addis Ababa, to be settled. In Australia, blue gum makes up 65% of all plantation hardwood, occupying perhaps 450,000 hectares. The total area of eucalypt plantations in Australia grew from almost nothing in 1998 to about a million hectares by 2008, spurred by a massive influx of finance, encouraged by the Managed Investments Act of 1998, which turned plantations into tax effective investments. But the global financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 saw off many of the companies involved.

With a bad reputation in many parts of the world because of invasiveness, eucalypts, some 14 species, have become naturalised in Europe, as have Australian species of hakea and 10 of acacia, wattles. Acacia, with about 1,053 species, is by far Australia's largest genus of plants. According to the government records, acacia forest is second only to eucalyptus forest, occupying in 2013 some 9.8 million hectares or 8% of the forest estate. The genus acacia occurs in all climatic regions of Australia and has a wide range of ecological tolerances. It has long been used as a food source and medicine, and for making tools and weapons. Golden wattle is in the national floral emblem, and the green and gold of acacias form the sporting colours for Australia.

Today, acacia species are perhaps used not so much in Australia for ornament as for soil rehabilitation because they fix nitrogen in their root nodules. Many species are grown in plantations in tropical and subtropical regions for industrial wood and for the bark, rich in tannin. They are increasingly important for fast-growing firewood and biomass. Australian blackwood, Acacia melanoxylon, is the best-known and most valuable temperate acacia timber species. It is commercially harvested in Tasmania, but most of the plantation timber on the world market is grown in South Africa, Chile and New Zealand. Black wattle bark from our Acacia mearnsii is a major source of commercial tannin used for leatherwork and adhesives, but Australia imports it from other countries.

In Australia itself, there were, even in the early 19th century, rising concerns about possible local extinctions of plants in the Sydney area. The scale of land clearing in many British territories, already with Europeanised agricultural systems, led the director of Kew Gardens in England to write: 'Many of the small local genera of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa will ultimately disappear, owing to the usurping tendencies of the emigrant plants of the northern hemisphere, energetically supported as they are by the artificial aids that the northern races of man afford them.'

By 1900, around 35% of New South Wales had been cleared or partly so, while 75% of the nation's rainforest had already gone. By the 1990s, some 300,000 tree ferns and grass trees were taken annually from the wild by the landscaping industry. Now over 1,000 Australian plant species are listed as vulnerable, and around 70 seed plant species are already extinct. However, contrary to the forebodings, the only planet genius to have been lost is Streblorrhiza, an attractive legume from Norfolk Island in the 19th century, and neither New Zealand nor South Africa has so far lost any.

Robyn Williams: Dr David Mabberley in the Blue Mountains. His book, Botanical Revelation: European Encounters with Australian Plants Before Darwin, will soon once more be in our shops. And yes, clearing land has just been removed as a dodge for our emissions accounting, our Kyoto subterfuge.

How humans have changed natural environments

How humans have changed natural environments

On The Science Show with Robyn Williams

Download How humans have changed natural environments (10.84 MB)

Download 10.84 MB

Wherever you look the effect of human influence is seen in the natural environment. David Mabberley describes the impact, such as the Australian Aborigines’ use of fire and the use of bison by native North Americans which is thought to have extended the prairies. In Africa, human pressure on the environment including poaching is seeing the decline of pachyderms such as elephants, rhinoceros, or hippopotamus, and other animals, and plants reliant on them for dispersal. In Britain, there is no original vegetation left other than the odd mountain top or sea cliff.

Painting by Numbers The life and art of Ferdinand Bauer

Author: David Mabberley

Published by NewSouth Books

Speaker

David Mabberley

Former Director Royal Botanic Garden Sydney

Presenter

Robyn Williams

Producer

David Fisher

Duration: 7min 53sec

Broadcast: Sat 5 Dec 2020, 12:01pm

Robyn Williams: We end with another book and another author in this year of Captain Cook. Remember him? Dr David Mabberley takes us back to those European beginnings in Australia.

David Mabberley: When Lieutenant James Cook came to Australia in 1770, he and his naturalist super-cargo, Joseph Banks, were surprised by the relative openness of the vegetation at Botany Bay, as was their natural history artist Sydney Parkinson who wrote, 'The trees, quite free from underwood, appeared like plantations in a gentleman's park.' Everywhere Cook and other European commentators wrote of smoke from fires set by Aboriginal people. These observations are but a small part of the huge corpus of literature and illustrations brought together by Bill Gammage to make the compelling case for the ancient very heavy fire management and therefore enormous botanical modification of eastern Australia by Aboriginal people, long before European settlement.

The first Australians had modified, largely by fire it would seem, the Australian landscape, such that they could coexist in an apparently sustainable way with the plants and animals here. In many parts of the country, the highly modified vegetation known as a fire climax, dominated by those of the original tree species adapted to fire regimes due to lightning, expanded symbiotically with the clever new bipeds, at the expense of less fire tolerant species.

With the opening up of the vegetation and their increasing prominence, grasses, adapted to tolerance of grazing marsupials palatable to humans, were therefore maintained in the landscape because their usual ecological successors, trees, would have been nibbled away as seedlings.

The human/fire/grass/grazing-animal system is not unique to Australia, but by the time of the first Dutch and British arrivals here, the first Australians had had tens of thousands of years to reach such a kind of mutualistic equilibrium. But it would be foolish to have some kind of rosy Rousseau-esque view of that first human infiltration of the continent. As it was to be with later European conquest, there is likely to have been a number of casualties in terms of animal and plant extinctions. It is still hotly debated as to how much of the original megafauna, for example, was helped on its way, but the story in other parts of the world suggest that the arrival of the first humans had, as usual, a devastating effect.

Humans are good at ecosystem modification, sometimes with disastrous consequences for them and the rest of the environment. In terms of the well-known collapse of civilisations like the Maya, but the speed with which this modification happened in the distant past is shown by the example of Europe. With the withdrawal of the ice sheets at the end of the last glaciation, the tundra vegetation was grazed by animals, including mammoths, and we know what happened to them! In an urbanising Africa and Asia today, we are now witnessing the similar end of the pachyderms, besides many, many other animals and associated plants reliant on them for disbursal.

In Europe, as it warmed, there came a forest maximum. But if you travelled to, say, Britain today, there is no original forest, in fact no original vegetation left at all, save perhaps on a few mountaintops and sea cliffs. The whole North European landscape is an artefact of just 10,000 years of human activity, and such landscapes were those over much of eastern and other coastal Australia in 1770. What is surprising in Europe is that the richest habitats today include grasslands with orchids and other small plants that must've been very rare in the forest maximum and are maintained by the incisors of introduced animals, particularly sheep. Take away the sheep, and a species-poor secondary scruffy woodland appears.

Similarly, native North Americans extended the prairies through their management of bison. The eastern United States was in fact less wooded than it is today, and firewood was a precious resource, so that the locals on seeing Europeans arrive by ship drew the reasonable conclusion that the settlers must've run out of firewood at home, the only good reason to move away.

Similarly, in the upper Blue Mountains where I live, the forest surrounded settlements, now called Blackheath and Mount Victoria, were visited by Governor Macquarie in 1815. He named them Hounslow Heath and One Tree Hill. You do not give such names to heavily forested places.

The botanical revelation that comprised the European recording of Australia's plants from 1606 until the arrival here of Charles Darwin in 1836 was the result of a combination of pursuits with different motives. The initial search for riches comparable with those in South America yielded little, Terra Australis turning out to be a largely arid continent with no crops suited to European agriculture, while the immense mineral wealth of Australia remained largely hidden.

Then came the concern about rival spheres of influence of European powers in the Pacific, especially Britain and France, the real reason for major expeditions being dispatched and land claimed. Incidental to establishing such presences was the collecting of natural productions, usually with a hope that these would be resources to allow colonies to survive without financial support from their European masters.

Charles Darwin visited Australia in 1836 and later in his monumental book, Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, effectively the evidence for much of his theory of natural selection in the hastily drawn up Origin of Species, he wrote of the potentially economic plants in Australia: 'It has often been remarked that we do not owe a single useful plant to Australia or the Cape of Good Hope or to New Zealand. Their plants have not been improved and consequently cannot compete with those which have been cultivated and improved during thousands of years in Europe.'

Similarly blinkered, shortly afterwards Thomas Livingstone Mitchell misinterpreted Aboriginal grain harvesting for hay making, when in fact there was what has now been posited as an Aboriginal grain belt right across the interior of the country, with grindstones argued to have been made up to 25,000 years ago.

It is true that internationally traded edible Australian commodities comprise products from species encountered by Europeans after Darwin's visit and that he was echoing opinions considered irrefutable. In fact, at first the most useful species commercially were the timbers, most of which were then still to be described scientifically. Such included red cedar, Toona ciliata, especially from the Hunter Valley, hoop pine, Araucaria cunninghamii, from the Brisbane area, and many eucalypts, Sydney blue gum, Eucalyptus saligna, being said to be the most generally useful of all the Australian woods.

Robyn Williams: Dr David Mabberley, former director of our oldest scientific institution, the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney. His books are superb. The Florilegium is available any day now.

Economic Botany 2003, Ancient techniques of linen production of flax (Linum usitatissimum)

Economic Botany 2003

Renee Ruhaak, Marijke Langeveld

qryEconomicBotanyBlog

Ancient techniques of linen production of flax (Linum usitatissimum)
The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the techniques which were used in making linen.
Ancient techniques of linen production of flax (Linum usitatissimum)
Flax ( Linum usitatissimum) is one of the oldest plants of which textile is being made.
European cloth made from flax, likely to be made of cultivated plants, of 8000 up to 9000 years old has been found. cloth made from flax, likely to be made of cultivated plants, of 8000 up to 9000 years old has been found.
Book 1: (Kalkman, C. Planten voor dagelijks gebruik, KNNV Utrecht, 2003)
Besides linen, flax is used for a high variety of other purposes, as its name says; Linum usitatissimum means ‘most useful flax’.
Both stalks and seed are exploited for human use.
From the fibres of the flax plant, paper is made, which is nowadays used in products as money billets and cigarette paper.
Longer fibres can be used as isolation material and the spinned thread is good for the stitching of wounds.
From the seed of Linen, oil is extracted (linseed oil) and that can be used as basis for paint (it is a quick drying oil) and to make linoleum.
The seed can be eaten and both oil and seed have a medicinal value. (1)
In the past, two types of L. usitatissimum have been cultivated; one which produces much good seed and a type that gives long, strong fibres.
The seed-producing plants are smaller and more branched than the plants for the production of fibres, which can become about 1 m. high and do not branch much.
From fibre plants, harvesting of seed is important too to get offspring.
Other than ramie, (Boehmeria nivea), which is a fibre plant giving soft, water resistant fibres, flax has the greatest tensile strength of any natural fibre, and is 20% stronger when wet.(1)
Spinning flax into thread is facilitated by properties inherent to the fibre, including its length (two to three feet when will prepared).
The cloth linen is very soft and it can be woven into a rather thin textile. It is a very durable textile which can be washed at high temperatures without shrinking.
A typical character is that flax is hard to spin evenly.
This makes linen not as smooth as cotton which is made from hair and not fibres.
Although flax has many advantages as a fibre crop, its overwhelming disadvantage is the amount of labor, skilled and otherwise, required from sowing to harvest.(9)
website https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/flax-production-in-the-seventeenth-century.htm
At the end of this paper we will discuss the future perspectives of linen.
FIGURE:Morphology of Linum usitatissimum. Flax is a small annual plant with lanceolate leaves. The fruit does not open.

Economic Botany Course in 2010

I am looking for all the participants from the Economic Botany Course in 2010

title	Author
2010?	Auke Haanstra/ Hiemstra?
Banana & Plantain (Musa L.)	Susana Arias Guerrero
Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus)	Bhanumas Chantarasuwan
Medicinal use of Cannabis sativa	Constantijn Mennes
Mesoamerican “Copals”	Ainslie Harrison
MUSANGA CECROPIOIDES - umbrella tree	Sabine van Onselen
Sacred trees, A short overview on several trees from the Moraceae family	Britt Myren

23 years of Economic Botany in Leiden

Bananas– The war on wilt, Origin of edibility

Bananas– The war on wilt, Origin of edibility; Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
At the origin of edible bananas are wild species that typically produce fruits full of seeds.
Even though only a handful of species have been domesticated, the banana's wild relatives comprise more than 75 species that are native to the humid tropical forests that extend from India to the Pacific.
We now know that edibility in the bananas and plantains depends primarily on the occurrence of parthenocarpy, which is the development of the fruit without pollination of the female flower (Perrier, 2009, 2011)
and always coupled with more or less female sterility, causing a tendency for the fruit to be seedless (Dodds, 1943).
The potential to produce parthenocarpic fruits has been traced to genes present in Musa acuminata (Simmonds, 1953).
But since these plants were still fertile, they continued mating with other fertile banana plants.
Domestication for edibility most likely started with farmers transplanting the offshoots (suckers) of plants that were edible by virtue of having less seeds and more pulp.
latter could be plants from the same or different (sub)species.
Sterility is most likely due to a combination of structural and genetic factors (Sardos et al. 2016).
The structural factors are linked to hybridization between distant relatives as inherited mismatched chromosomes made it difficult for the progeny to produce fertile ovules and pollen.
But scientists also believe that farmers preferentially propagating the plants that produced fruits with the least seeds might have selected for genes that contribute to sterility (Sardos et al., 2016).
Triploidy made further sexual reproduction extremely unlikely.
Although sterility and parthenocarpy are important factors that contribute to the desirability of banana fruits, sterility has impeded progress in breeding programs.
Through natural somatic (vegetative) mutation, hybridization, and selection over many thousands of years, considerable genetic variability has arisen within the cultivated bananas, giving rise to more than 1000 varieties (Nelson, 2002).
Figure 2. Evolution of the cultivated bananas, modified from Simmonds (1995) by Nayar (2010)

Bananas– The war on wilt, The Genus Musa

Bananas– The war on wilt, The Genus Musa ; Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
The genus Musa was initially divided in two species: M. paradisiaca for plantains and M. sapientum for the common banana by Linnaeus, respectively.
However, it was soon discovered that both were falsely identified as separate species and in fact both were hybridized variants of M. paradisiaca and M. balbisiana.
Eventually, M. x paradisiaca was accepted as the general name for the hybrid species (Valmayor et al., 2000)
At the moment the genus comprises four different sections, with each their own characteristics.
Two with 11 chromosome pairs and two with 10 chromosome pairs.
Two with 11 chromosome pairs and two with 10 chromosome pairs. Section Eumusa Baker may be called the group of the true bananas.
It contains the two commonest and most widely ranging species in the genus, M. acuminata and M. balbisiana and with them all the cultivated forms that we believe to have been derived from them.
Bananas and plantains are starchy berries produced by hybrids and/or sports of Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana.
Rare genome contributions from another species may have occurred but are not yet well documented (Simmonds, 1986).
M. balbisiana combines with almost anything, which is very interesting in view of its wide range, well-defined nature as a species, and relatively narrow variation (Cheesman, 1947).
Musa balbisiana accessions displayed resistance to Xanthomonas wilt in a greenhouse trial (Tripathi et al., 2008).
Musa acuminata is a wild species of banana best known for being at the origin of the vast majority of edible bananas, by itself or through hybridization with Musa balbisiana.
Four subspecies (banksii, zebrina, malaccensis and burmannica) have been confirmed to be involved in the domestication of the banana (Perrier, 2009).

Bananas– The war on wilt, Taxonomy

Bananas– The war on wilt, Taxonomy  ;Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
Bananas belong to the genus Musa of the Musaceae in the order Zingiberales (Stover and Simmonds, 1987).
Musaceae includes 2 genera, Ensete and Musa.
The family has not been revised after the classical work of Cheesman (1947–1950) and Simmonds (1953, 1962), although several species have been subsequently described (Nayar, 2010).

Bananas– The war on wilt, Morphology

Bananas– The war on wilt, Morphology ;Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
Bananas are the very variable fruits derived from crossed species within the genus Musa, therefore a general morphological description of the genus Musa is included.
The banana plant is a large, perennial, monocarpic (fruiting once, then dying), monocotyledonous herb 2-9 m in height that arises from large, subterranean rhizomes (Nelson et al., 2006). The roots are adventitious,
spreading 4-5 m laterally, descending to 75 cm, but mainly in the top 15 cm,
forming a dense mat (Moore, 1992). Suckers spring up around the main plant forming a clump or "stool'', the eldest sucker replacing the main plant when it fruits and dies, and this process of succession continues indefinitely (Morton, 1987).
Leaves are produced by a single apical meristem, which typically forms only a low short stem or pseudobulb (McClatchey, 2000).
Smooth, oblong or elliptic, fleshy-stalked leaves, numbering 4 or 5 to 15, are arranged spirally. They may be entirely green, green with maroon splotches, or green on the upper side and red purple beneath (Morton 1987).
The petioles of the leaves are long and expanded below into long, sheathing and stem-encircling leaf-bases forming a pseudostem (Cheesman, 1947).
New leaves originating from the corm grow up continuously through the centre of the pseudostem with their laminas tightly rolled.
The emerging leaf unfolds a large oblong blade, 150-400 cm x 70-100 cm, with a pronounced supporting midrib and well-marked, pinnately arranged, parallel veins (Moore, 1992).
One terminal inflorescence rises from each corm, its axis (peduncle) extending through the centre of the pseudostem and bending down when exserted (Moore, 1992).
The spike, at first, is a large, long-oval, tapering, purple-clad bud.
As it opens, it is seen that the slim, nectar-rich, tubular, toothed, white flowers are clustered in whorled double rows along the floral stalk, each cluster covered by a thick, waxy bract, purple outside, deep-red within.
Normally, the bract will lift from the first hand in 3 to 10 days. If the plant is weak, opening may not occur until 10 or 15 days (Morton, 1987).
The bracts open in sequence (about 1 per day) from base to top while the peduncle elongates.
They often become reflexed when the flowers develop and they are shed when the fruits start to develop, but this differs between species.
Female flowers develop in the proximal 5-15 rows, male flowers at the distal end of the inflorescence, in the middle sometimes neuter flowers are present (Moore, Figure 1. Basic morphology of the banana plant 1992).
The flowers contain 5 stamens and an inferior, trilocular ovary.
The perianth (according to the usual interpretation) usually consists of two parts: a compound tepal (calyx) essentially tubular, but split to the base on the adaxial side, 5-toothed at the apex (Cheesman, 1947).
In about one day after the opening of the flower clusters, the male flowers and their bracts are usually shed,
leaving most of the upper stalk naked except at the very tip where there usually remains an unopened bud containing the last-formed of the male flowers.
However, there are some mutants such as 'Dwarf Cavendish' with persistent male flowers and bracts which wither and remain, filling the space between the fruits and the terminal bud (Morton, 1987).
The fruits are variable in size, shape and colour. They are generally elongate-cylindrical, straight to strongly curved, 3-40 cm long and 2-8 cm in diameter.
The fruit apex is important in variety identification; it may be tapered, rounded or blunt (Nelson, 2002).
The endocarp, ivory-white to yellow or pink, may be firm, even gummy with latex when unripe, turning tender and slippery, or soft and mellow or rather dry and mealy or starchy when ripe.
The flavour may be mild and sweet or subacid with a distinct apple tone.
The common cultivated types are generally seedless with only vestiges of ovules visible as brown specks (Morton, 1987).
Seeds are often present in wild Musa species.
When seeds are present, they vary among species in shape and morphology.
Seeds of Musa balbisiana are dark brown, ovoid, about 4 mm long with a conspicuous white, powdery endosperm (Nelson, 2002).

Bananas– The war on wilt, Chemistry of bananas

Bananas– The war on wilt, Chemistry of bananas   ;Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
Bananas, mainly consisting of carbohydrates (22.2 to 31.2 percent), are low in fats, cholesterol, and sodium.
They are extremeley high in potassium (400 miligrams to 100 grams of pulp), which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates the
body’s water-balance (Girish and Satish, 2008) and therefore makes bananas the perfect food to help beat high blood pressure (Debabandya et al., 2010).
Bananas are a good source of vitamin C (Stover and Simmonds, 1987) and vitamin B, which helps calm the nervous system (Singh and Bhat, 2003).
During ripening, the starch component is gradually converted to simple sugars (fructose, glucose, and sucrose), while the moisture content of the pulp increases.
The time of conversion to simple sugars can also be used to differentiate plantains from bananas, which are consumed raw.
Namely, plantains or cooking bananas converse later compared to raw bananas (McClatchey, 2000).
A study by Ashraf et al. (2010) proved that ripe bananas exhibit fluorescence when exposed to ultraviolet light,
suggesting that this allows animals which are able to see light in the ultraviolet spectrum, can more easily detect ripened bananas.
All parts of the banana plant have medicinal applications (Amit and Shailandra, 2006).
Antifungal and antibiotic principles are found in the peel and pulp of fully ripe bananas (Brooks, 2008).
A fungicide in the peel and pulp of green fruits is active against a fungus disease of tomato plants (Ponnuswamy et al., 2011).
Norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin are also present in the ripe peel and pulp (Ratule et al., 2007).
The first two elevate blood pressure; serotonin inhibits gastric secretion and stimulates the smooth muscle of the intestines (Anhwang et al., 2009).
Bananas can also help people trying to give up smoking,
as the high levels of Vitamin C, A1, B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal (Mokbel and Hashinaga, 2005)
potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal (Mokbel and Hashinaga, 2005)

Bananas– The war on wilt, Bananas in human culture

Bananas– The war on wilt, Bananas in human culture, Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
Bananas have played a significant role in culture and religion.
Banana plants are often used in cuisine, as packaging material, and as religious offerings, for instance.
Additionally, countless references have been made to bananas in pop culture, particularly in music, graphic art, video games, and film and television.
Here, a small selection from a wide range of banana-related religious and cultural practices will be touched upon.
In addition to the consumption of the banana fruits, banana leaves are also often utilized in cuisine.
When banana leaves are used in cuisine, the leaves are in fact not consumed, but rather used as packaging material.
For instance, the Indonesian snack ‘lemper’, which is a roll made of sticky rice and seasoned meat filling, is often packaged in banana leaves.
Additionally, banana leaves are often used in religious and cultural practices.
This occurs predominantly in Buddhism and Hinduism, where banana leaves are used as material to produce offering bowls with or as decoration.
Additionally, in Hinduism banana trees are sacred and considered to be a symbol of fertility, and the leaves are often used in offerings (Lim, 2012).
Interestingly, in addition to Hinduism and Buddhism, cultural uses of bananas have been observed.
For instance, early Hawaiians have used banana suckers as truce flags in times of war (Lim, 2012).
In modern pop culture, bananas are often referred to.
For instance, in 1923, Frank Silver and Irving Cohn composed a song named ‘Yes! We have no bananas’, which became a major hit soon after its release.
The song has been referred to multiple times afterwards, often in context of a banana-related catastrophe.
For instance, New York Times author Dan Koeppel wrote an article about the Cavendish banana and funghal diseases, named ‘Yes, we will have no bananas’ (Koeppel, 2008).
Additionally, in comedic film and television, people are often shown slipping on banana peels.
This gag runs back to at least the early 20th century and is still often used nowadays, even outside of comical film and television (Garrison, 2012).
For instance, in the popular Nintendo videogame ‘Mario Kart’, banana peels are used to make opponents slip and as such, the player gains an advantage over his/her opponents.
Interestingly, the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize, which is awarded to research that is in some way remarkable or comical, was given to researches which clarified the mechanisms behind the slippery nature of banana peels.

Bananas– The war on wilt, Bananas in human culture, Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
Bananas have played a significant role in culture and religion.
Banana plants are often used in cuisine, as packaging material, and as religious offerings, for instance.
Additionally, countless references have been made to bananas in pop culture, particularly in music, graphic art, video games, and film and television.
Here, a small selection from a wide range of banana-related religious and cultural practices will be touched upon.
In addition to the consumption of the banana fruits, banana leaves are also often utilized in cuisine.
When banana leaves are used in cuisine, the leaves are in fact not consumed, but rather used as packaging material.
For instance, the Indonesian snack ‘lemper’, which is a roll made of sticky rice and seasoned meat filling, is often packaged in banana leaves.
Additionally, banana leaves are often used in religious and cultural practices.
This occurs predominantly in Buddhism and Hinduism, where banana leaves are used as material to produce offering bowls with or as decoration.
Additionally, in Hinduism banana trees are sacred and considered to be a symbol of fertility, and the leaves are often used in offerings (Lim, 2012).
Interestingly, in addition to Hinduism and Buddhism, cultural uses of bananas have been observed.
For instance, early Hawaiians have used banana suckers as truce flags in times of war (Lim, 2012).
In modern pop culture, bananas are often referred to.
For instance, in 1923, Frank Silver and Irving Cohn composed a song named ‘Yes! We have no bananas’, which became a major hit soon after its release.
The song has been referred to multiple times afterwards, often in context of a banana-related catastrophe.
For instance, New York Times author Dan Koeppel wrote an article about the Cavendish banana and funghal diseases, named ‘Yes, we will have no bananas’ (Koeppel, 2008).
Additionally, in comedic film and television, people are often shown slipping on banana peels.
This gag runs back to at least the early 20th century and is still often used nowadays, even outside of comical film and television (Garrison, 2012).
For instance, in the popular Nintendo videogame ‘Mario Kart’, banana peels are used to make opponents slip and as such, the player gains an advantage over his/her opponents.
Interestingly, the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize, which is awarded to research that is in some way remarkable or comical, was given to researches which clarified the mechanisms behind the slippery nature of banana peels.

Bananas– The war on wilt, :Bananas and humans

Bananas– The war on wilt, Bananas and humans Bananas– The war on wilt ;Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
Bananas are very healthy, eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40% (Amit and Shailandra, 2006).
In 2004, the global production of bananas was 106 million tonnes, which made it the second most important fruit crop of the world, only after citrus (FAOSTAT, 2004).
The top banana-producing countries of the world are India (15% of total production), China, Ecuador, Brazil and Philippines (FAO, 2003).
Bananas provides 10 to 27% of the daily calorie intake of the population in several countries and helps provide year-round food security (Nayar, 2010).
In 2011 bananas were the world’s fifth most important food crops after maize, rice, wheat and cassava (Tripathi, 2011).
Nelson et al. (2006) stated that the plant genus Musa is of extraordinary significance to human societies due to its fruit bananas.
Musa species grow in a wide range of environments and have varied human uses, ranging from the edible bananas of the tropics to fibre and ornamental plants, although often named differently in many cultures.
Musa species attained a portion of central importance within Pacific societies:
the plant is a source of food, beverages, fermentable sugars, medicines, flavourings, cooked foods, fragrance, rope, shelter, clothing and numerous ceremonial and religious uses (Nelson et al., 2006).
Bananas are the second best sold tropical fruit in The Netherlands (GFK, 2014).
Dutch people eat about 720 million bananas a year, mostly from the cultivar ‘Giant Cavendish’, also known as the dessert banana, which can be eaten raw.
Though, in many tropical countries they prefer bananas that have to be baked before they can be eaten, so called plantains.
Bananas may be differentiated from plantains on the basis of moisture content, with bananas generally averaging 83 percent moisture and plantains 65 percent, but intermediate examples may also be found (Lessard, 1992).

Bananas– The war on wilt, Introduction

Bananas– The war on wilt, Introduction,Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rureng
Recent headlines have been stating the global banana production is under great threat.
‘Why bananas as we know them might go extinct (again)’ - CNN.
‘Bananas face extinction due to spread of unstoppable deadly fungus’ – Express, UK.
'World’s top banana could go extinct’ – Wall Street Journal.
What is the actual current state on bananas as we know them?
This study provides an insight in the threats concerning global banana production, current control measures and recommendations for future pest control.

Bananas– The war on wilt, Abstract

Bananas– The war on wilt, Abstract ,Rody Blom, Saskia Bollerman, Janna Horjus, Koen Rurenga
This literature study provides an insight into the threats concerning global banana production, current control measures and recommendations for future pest control.
First, the cultural and economic value of bananas is discussed.
Banana morphology, taxonomy, distribution and ecology is explored and four major threats to the banana are exposed. Finally, the current control methods for these threats are examined.
Finally, the current control methods for these threats are examined.
Recent headlines have been stating the global banana production is under great threat.
‘Why bananas as we know them might go extinct (again)’ - CNN.
‘Bananas face extinction due to spread of unstoppable deadly fungus’ – Express, UK.
'World’s top banana could go extinct’ – Wall Street Journal.
What is the actual current state on bananas as we know them?
This study provides an insight in the threats concerning global banana production, current control measures and recommendations for future pest control.