Westwood

Hi all i have a lady on ebay who i have bought several types Of seeds from when i just Noticed she is selling Banana seeds as Edible bananas .

I wrote to her and asked if she was 100% sure of what they where because as far as i knew there is no banana thats edible that can be grown from seed .. am i correct on this ? Tammy

Here is the Link
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...%3AUS%3A1&rd=1

mrbungalow

This seller is bullshi**ing, like alot of people selling on e-bay. Especially banana-plant/seed sellers on e-bay give information you should take with a pinch of salt.
There are no seeded varieties suited for eating unless you want to chip your teeth on seeds. Also, in my experience, atleast 50 seeds are needed to be sure you get any germination. I would never pay that much for 5 seeds. For that price you can almost get 100 seeds at other and more serious seed-dealers.

Erlend

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SeTex

Hello,
I'm new to this site as a poster, but just got off an African webpage about bananas of various types being trialed over there. It mentioned some of the FHIA types as well as Cardaba, of which the latter was said to sometimes produce some seeds. Not sure how large they are, but Cardaba is considered an edible variety mostly used for cooking. Hope this info helps. Another variety sounding somewhat like Rose is mentioned, too, and that it also sometimes produces seeds. It might be that a variety of bananas we consider "edible" will produce seeds if pollinated properly. Namwah is one that I also read can sometimes produce seed.

Richard

... in the presence of one of its hybridizing precursors. You do not want the offspring that will be produced by those seeds. As mrbungalow pointed out in the previous post: don't fall for the BS of "seeds to produce edible bananas".

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Back in business at plantsthatproduce.com

SeTex

Not sure I follow, Richard. Please explain. I understand that a seed might produce a banana with seeds, if that's the thinking, but then again, what about the FHIA varieties being produced? Isn't there a way to weed out the unlikeable ones and keep the ones without too much seediness? Oh course, that would mean fields of growing bananas until fruiting, then discarding all the ones that don't make the grade, lol - probably lots, eh?

SeTex

Here's a link that could help, too.
Are Banana Trees Self-Fruitful? | Home Guides | SF Gate

It mentions bananas don't need pollination to get fruit, and when unpollinated will produce fruit without seeds. I also suspect that overs many years bananas chosen as food were types with small seeds. Someone mentioned in a post, somewhere, that he actually got some small seeds which sprouted I think. They may be only on the verge of viability when small or rather underformed, but still could be coaxed into germinating in such cases. Who knows?

I do know one thing the article gets wrong. It is about Cavendish bananas not being capable of producing from seed. I recently read about the efforts in producing new strains of cavendish types of bananas due to disease problems with older strains. It looked bleak, but they went back to the Giant Cavendish or some other early Cavendish strain and managed to get some pollination that produced viable seeds. There are now some new Cavendish varieties being grown with rather different characteristics which gives hope for developing greater disease-resistance in Cavendish type bananas. Of course, we all know Cavendish bananas are commonly used as seedless fruits, so this again shows that some edible bananas can produce seeds that will germinate. Also, the scientists are seeking new material for production of edible bananas for commerce, so there has to be some way in which that could come from these bananas which produced seeds or they wouldn't even be trying, right?

from the sea

some types have viable pollen and some have viable ovaries, they are just not very fertile. It takes a lot of work to get a few seeds.