Taxonomy
The genus Musa is in the family Musaceae. The APG III system assigns Musaceae to the order Zingiberales, part of the commelinid clade of the monocotyledonous flowering plants.
Some sources assert that Musa is named for Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus. Others say that Linnaeus, who named the genus in 1750, simply adapted an Arabic word for banana, mauz. The word banana is generally said to be derived from the Wolof word banaana. Some 70 species of Musa were recognized by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families as of January 2013; several produce edible fruit, while others are cultivated as ornamentals.
Banana classification has long been a problematic issue for taxonomists. Linnaeus originally classified bananas into two species based only on their uses as food: Musa sapientum for dessert bananas and Musa paradisiaca for plantains. Subsequently further species names were added. However, this approach proved inadequate to address the sheer number of cultivars existing in the primary center of diversity of the genus, Southeast Asia. Many of these cultivars were given names which proved to be synonyms.
In a series of papers published in 1947 onwards, Ernest Cheesman showed that Linnaeus' Musa sapientum and Musa paradisiaca were actually cultivars and descendants of two wild seed-producing species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, both first described by Luigi Aloysius Colla. He recommended the abolition of Linnaeus' species in favor of reclassifying bananas according to three morphologically distinct groups of cultivars – those primarily exhibiting the botanical characteristics of Musa balbisiana, those primarily exhibiting the botanical characteristics of Musa acuminata, and those with characteristics that are the combination of the two. Researchers Norman Simmonds and Ken Shepherd proposed a genome-based nomenclature system in 1955. This system eliminated almost all the difficulties and inconsistencies of the earlier classification of bananas based on Linnaeus' Musa sapientum and Musa paradisiaca. Despite this, the original names are still recognized by some authorities today, leading to confusion.
The currently accepted scientific names for bananas are Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana for the ancestral species, and Musa × paradisiaca for the hybrid M. acuminata × M. balbisiana.
Synonyms of M. × paradisica include:
- A large number of subspecific and varietial names of M. × paradisiaca, including M. p. subsp. sapientum
- Musa × dacca
- Musa × sapidisiaca
- Musa × sapientum, and a large number of its varietal names, including M. × sapientum var. paradisiaca
Generally, modern classifications of banana cultivars follow Simmonds and Shepherd's system. Cultivars are placed in groups based on the number of chromosomes they have and which species they are derived from. Thus the Latundan banana is placed in the AAB Group, showing that it is a triploid derived from both M. acuminata (A) and M. balbisiana (B). For a list of the cultivars classified under this system see List of banana cultivars.
In 2012 a team of scientists announced they had achieved a draft sequence of the genome of Musa acuminata.
Read more about this topic: Bannanna