The first species of banana probably arrived about 4000 years ago, give or take a few hundred years, said a team of European-Australian researchers who could not narrow down the period further in the absence of enough archaeological data.
Diligently reconstructing the evolution and spread of banana using genetics, archeological and linguistic data, the researchers claimed that banana originated in New Guinea about 6000 years ago.
In addition to genetics and archeological signposts, the South Asian language also bears the telltale signatures of banana’s journey, which was aided by sea-faring people who brought bananas with them and introduced them to the locals.
The team analysed more than 1100 words related to banana varieties found in South- East Asia and Melanesia — a part of Oceania comprising the islands of Australian northern coast — to chronicle the journey.
“The terms used for bananas in northern India and Nepal (Kela in Hindi) reflect the earliest terms we can find. Many Dravidian terms like baale in Kannada also reflect very ancient terms that were used in South- East Asia as far east as New Guinea,” Mark Donohue, a linguist at the Australian National University in Canberra told Deccan Herald.
“The word’s ravel from The Philippines to Sulawesi, Papua New Guinea in the east, Borneo in the west, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and, India is clearly attested. The route exactly matches the travel of the Mlali variety of banana,” he said.
India, however, had its own native varieties even before the popular type arrived from south Asia. “Two varieties are endemic in north India. But domesticated varieties arrived from Indonesia and Thailand or from the area between New Guinea and Java,” said team member Xavier Perrier, a biologist at CIRAD, a French agriculture research centre.
“Even if India was not at the origin of banana domestication, it is an important centre of secondary diversification,” he said, adding that modern Indian varieties are very similar to those early varieties created in India.
Banana’s journey was reconstructed for a better understanding of its past to develop more resilient varieties. Since bananas are inbred for thousands of years, they are extremely vulnerable to pests.
A prerequisite for banana improvement is to reconstruct the domestication pathways of major groups, said the team in the latest edition of the Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences.