Scientist Are Running Out Of Time To Solve A Complicated History Of Origin Of Domestication Of Bananas

Dec, 2022 - By WMR

A recent study suggest that the history of origin of domestication of bananas is very complicated than it looks.

There are many mysteries or puzzles in front of scientists and they are running behind these questions to find an answer to them. Ranging from the reason by which the dinosaur extincted to finding water resource on moon scientists have succeeded in solving many such questions. No one such puzzle they are trying to solve is of finding the ancestors or origin of bananas. It was previously assumed that man domesticated bananas nearly 7000 years ago, but now the scientists claim that history of bananas is more complicated than it seems and there is lot of mystery about it’s species and sub-species.

A recent study was conducted on the origins of bananas and the findings were published in a journal named, Frontiers in Plant Science. Domesticated bananas, aging nearly 7000 years ago, are descendants of four species of bananas, which are ether sub-species or closely related species of Wild Banana Musa Acuminata. Before these bananas were domesticated, it is believed that wild banana Musa Acuminata was present in Australia and northern borderlands between India and Myanmar, about 110 million years ago.

Dr. Julie Sardos, The lead author of his study and a scientist at The Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT in Montpellier, France quoted that, “Here we show that most of today’s diploid cultivated bananas that descend from the wild banana M Acuminata are hybrids between different subspecies. At least three extra wild ‘mystery ancestors’ must have contributed to this mixed genome thousands of years ago, but haven’t been identified yet,”.

Scientists are also fearing that they have very less amount of time remained with them to peel off the ancient layers of bananas as they can go extinct at any time soon.