Cavendish Bananas facts
While investigating facts about Cavendish Bananas Going Extinct and Cavendish Bananas Extinct, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Banana candy doesn't taste like banana because the flavoring was invented while an old species of banana was popular, the Gros Michel, which tastes different to the currently popular banana, the Cavendish. Panama disease wiped out the Gros Michel but the artificial flavour never changed.
how tall do cavendish bananas grow?
The reason today's artificial banana flavoring for candy tastes so differently than an actual banana is because it is based on the Gros Michel Banana, which was nearly wiped out in the 50's due to a fungus. The bananas we eat today are from the Cavendish family.
What percentage of bananas are cavendish?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what do cavendish bananas taste like. Here are 34 of the best facts about Cavendish Bananas Origin and Cavendish Bananas Disease I managed to collect.
what are cavendish bananas?
-
There are many different types of bananas, including one that tastes like vanilla ice cream, however many of us only eat the common Cavendish banana, which can survive overseas shipping.
-
The "artificial banana" flavor is based on a real kind of banana called the Gros Michel. It was actually the predominant commercial banana available in the US prior to the 1950s, until a plague mostly wiped them out and they were replaced with the Cavendish banana we have today.
-
The species of banana eaten today is different to the species eaten pre 1965. The Gros Michel banana became commercially extinct in 1965 due to fungal disease. Today's main export banana, the Cavendish, is now under threat from the same disease.
-
A few decades ago, everyone ate a strain of banana called the Gros Michel. Its skin was more slippery than the Cavendish, the banana that we eat today, which is the reason why banana peels have been such a prominent cartoon gag.
-
Most bananas sold in grocery stores come from the Cavendish banana plant which is native to Southeast Asia but is grown in other parts of the world today.
-
There are a lot of different types of banana, but only rare varieties have pleasant taste. Banana of the Cavendish type is a variety that is currently consumed throughout the world.
-
The bananas sold in stores today are different than the variety sold in the 1950s. Gros Michel bananas were the dominant export to Europe and North America until the species was decimated by disease. Since then, exporters began growing bananas belonging to the similar-tasting Cavendish subgroup.
-
The majority of bananas in the west today (Cavendish) came from a single greenhouse in Devonshire, UK. Duke Cavendish of Devonshire got some bananas from Mauritius in 1834 and his gardener cultivated them. They were gradually shipped around the world, eventually achieving dominance in the 1950s
-
Before 1960 a tastier version of the ubiquitous banana called Gros Michel nearly went extinct, giving us the less creamy Cavendish, which could meet a similar fate
Why do we only eat cavendish bananas?
You can easily fact check why is saving cavendish bananas such an important task by examining the linked well-known sources.
The bananas we eat aren't the ones our grandparents ate, the Gros Michel. Those ones were wiped out by a fungus in 1960 and a new strain of that same fungus is threatening the bananas that we eat today, the Cavendish. - source
99% of banana export to developed countries is Cavendish bananas which are genetically nearly identical to each other and rely on cloning for reproduction and they show no resistance to certain diseases. - source
In the 1900's, 'Gros Michel' bananas were the most common banana type in Europe / North America. However, the 'Panama Disease' killed vast amounts of the crop, and their popularity was replaced in 1965 by the 'Cavendish'. Modern Cavendish bananas may face the same fate due to the TR4 Virus.
There is a red banana cultivar. When ripe, raw red bananas have a flesh that is cream to light pink in color. They are also softer and sweeter than the yellow Cavendish varieties, with a slight mango flavor. - source
When will cavendish bananas go extinct?
Cavendish bananas are all clones of each other, and as a result of the lack of genetic variety their existence is being threatened by a mutated version of a fungus that wiped out its predecessor.
How do cavendish bananas reproduce?
The "fake" tasting artificial banana flavoring actually has a close flavor to the Gros Michel variant of banana, which was largely wiped out by a fungus and replaced in most stores by the Cavendish variant in the 1900s.
The world's top banana variety, the Cavendish, may be wiped out in the near future from fungus. A similar event happened 60 years ago, but now there's no backup plan.
Banana flavouring is based on the Gros Michel banana, whilst the most cultivated banana is the Cavendish. This difference is why many people like either flavourings or actual bananas, but not the other.
Every banana consumed in the western world is directly descended from a plant grown in a Derbyshire estate's hothouse 180 years ago. This is the Cavendish Banana which replaced the Gros Michel - the most-exported banana that was wiped out by the fungus known as Panama disease in the 1950s.
Until the 1960s, we ate different bananas than we do today. We ate Gros Michel bananas until they were essentially wiped out in the Western hemisphere by Panama disease. Since then, we've ate the blander, easily bruisable but Panama disease-resistant Cavendish banana.