Banana plants are cultivated primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent for the production of fiber and as ornamental plants. As the banana are mainly tall, upright and quite sturdy, they are often mistaken for trees, but actually the main or upright stem is called a pseudostem, literally meaning "fake stem". Each pseudostem would produce a bunch of yellow, green of even red bananas before dying and being replaced by another pseudostem. The banana fruit grows in hanging clusters with up to 20 fruit to a tier (called a hand) and 3 -20 tiers to a bunch. The total of the hanging clusters is known as a bunch, or commercially as a "banana stem" and can weight from 30-50 kg. The fruit (known as banana or finger) averages 125 g. and is a valuable source of vitamin B6, vitamin C, and potassium.
The bananas from a group of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called 'plantain' and are generally used in cooking rather than eaten raw. Bananas may also be dried and eaten as a snack food. Dried bananas are also ground into banana flour. The banana propagation is vegetative by shooter. Today these shooters are used for Tissue Culture propagation.
The Grand Nain is of uncertain origin, has replaced the Dwarf in Colombia, Australia, Martinique, in many Hawaiian plantations and to some extent in Ecuador. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s, the Cavendish cultivar Grand Nain, imported from Central America, was thoroughly compared with the standard cultivars, Williams and Dwarf Cavendish.
In two separate long term trials, Grand Nain performed better than Williams. Although the two cultivars are similar in most aspects of pseudostem and leaf morphology, the cycle time of Grand Nain, in optimal growing conditions, is slightly shorter, bunches are slightly heavier and fingers slightly longer than Williams. These advantages all add up to a higher yield of extra large fruit per year with Grand Nain. In trials under optimal conditions in subtropical regions, Grand Nain outyielded Williams by 9.6 % over four crop cycles in one trial and by 7.2 % over three crop cycles in another trial.
The plant reaches 2.7-4.9 m. The pseudostem is splashed with dark brown, the bunch is long and cylindrical and the bananas are larger than those of the Dwarf and not as delicate. Male bracts and flowers are shed.
