A century ago, only a handful of tropical
fruits were available to Europe and North
America, and they were luxuries. Nowadays
the banana is a common breakfast food and
new fruits appear in the market every year.
Here are the most familiar.
Banana and Plantain Thanks to their
productivity and starchy nutritiousness,
bananas and plantains top the roster of world
fruit production and trade. The worldwide
annual per capita consumption is almost 30
lb/14 kg, and in regions where they’re a staple
food, individuals consume several hundred
kilograms per year. Bananas and plantains are
the seedless berries of a tree-sized herb
related to the grasses, Musa sapientum, which
originated in the tropics of Southeast Asia. A
banana plant produces a single flower
structure with from 1 to 20 “hands” or fruit
clusters, as many as 300 “fingers” of
individual fruit, each fruit weighing from a