gautam

Hi friends!

Long time lurker. Was prompted by message to introduce myself. Native to Nadia district, West Bengal, India. It is part of the moribund Ganga flood plain & lies beneath the meteorological phenomenon called the Monsoon Trough, a variable zone of descending air currents that gives rise to frequent drought and interrupted rain [hard on crops e.g. rice, sugarcane with sigmoid growth curves & sensitive phenological "windows"]. This region originally depended on perennials like bananas, Phoenix sylvestris [the sugar date palm], semi-perennial aroids like Alocasia & Colocasia [center of origin & domestication] plus a variety of rices from several breeding groups, to maintain stable agro-ecosystems. That has undergone negative changes since 1757 to the present.

Growing up amidst the extraordinary turmoil and agricultural reverses of the early 60s made one determined to understand plants and the ecosytems they controlled. That has led one to a career in plant physiology and membrane biology. However, my major interest lies in the 2 significant saviors of my childhood, the landraces of banana in Bengal and Phoenix sylvestris.

You all know the role of the SINGLE wild diploid AA landrace (M. acuminata ssp.burmannoides) from Bengal, Calcutta-4, in helping solve many disease problems of the plantain [AAB] growing regions of Africa. Likewise, I have been fascinated with a similar landrace that is treasured in our area, and is simply known as BIJOO i.e. SEEDY. The plant is massive and thick.Every part is valued in the peasant economy. I have NEVER ever seen anything, let alone any of the many other varieties of banana grown in those districts, shrug off such utter neglect & horrid soils with such ease. Growing in the worst swell-shrink clays, abutting seasonally flooded ditches, year after year the clumps not just persist but increase.

HOW? I am not a wide-eyed flower child, playing at “forest arming” or some new-fangled magic. Root membranes and nutritional genetics, biochemistry, and endophytes is what I do.I still cannot understand the energy balance & water relations of its massive girth and rude good health. Contiguous plantains, Kanthali [Pisang Awak, drought hardy type] & other bananas are puny by comparison. So what gives? As you might guess, there are no research funds for peasant crops!!
Yet, this banana is vital to so many subsistence farmers. The UOPENED flower is the most treasured vegetable in the Calcutta markets: it is called the GARBHA MOCHA, or womb flower. Likewise, the peduncle or the blanched white flower stalk running the length of pseudostem is especially prized in this variety for its massive thickness as well as extreme tenderness. The next most prized is from the race KANTHALI, but there one waits for the fruiting bunch to form. Thus, the remnant florets are small, and the flower stalk far more advanced in age and stringier, than this voluptuous product.
The leaves are proportionately huge and therefore more prized for the traditional use as food plates in orthodox celebrations and ritual worship. This use will never decrease and demand only outstrips supply. The same may be said of the inner, supple stem sheaths. The outermost dry leaf and stems comprise the preferred cordage and ligatures for a number of special usages, whose demands are open ended. Anything else is fodder.

Sword suckers or other older suckers of this most prolific variety have a very profitable use: they are used for ritual welcome objects, like cornstalks at Thanksgiving, except this is used year-round. Special days see heavy demand. It is not possible to sacrifice sweet banana suckers, which also do not grow up at the correct times nor grow large enough. Therefore, this race has to be the B-52 of the banana world.

This SEEDY race is very culture-specific for its value-added dimensions. As land prices rise around Bengal, the value of all of its many edible plus ritual products combined is sure to rise. HOWEVER, given its sturdy disease free nature, there should be more attention devoted to it, even if it is just for the global banana industry under PROMUSA or a similar mandate. This race is not quite the wild AA race. There is so much genetic erosion taking place in Bengal that there should be a serious attempt to collect the best clones that have been preserved by locals.

Would be happy to learn from others with more knowledge of this race & cv.KANTHALI. Especially eager to learn about dwarfing forms of Pisang Awak types, work being done with Kanthali, root & yield QTLS, sugar & DRY Mass per unit area of land or leaf.

Thank you very much.

Darkman

OK Sure What you said!

But

I do have a nice Phoenix sylvestris! It is the King of my Palm collection.



Seriously Welcome aboard. Your passion is clearly evident and I'm glad you are here.

__________________
Darkman in Pensacola

AS ALWAYS IMHO AND YOUR MILEAGE MAY DIFFER!!!!!!!!

Life - Some assembly required, As is no warranty, Batteries not included, Instructions shipped separately and are frequently wrong!

Kentucky Bourbon - It may not solve the problem but it helps to make it tolerable!

Statistics - Data that analyst twist to support the insane opinions of those that pay them.

raygrogan

Great post. Do you know how your seeded survivor stands up against banana bunchy top virus? In Hawaii the last I heard is they have no true silver bullet against the disease, and it is whacking whole banana growing areas. With a lot of management you can co-exist with the virus, but it a major pain in the arse. The University of Hawaii has a group working on it. If they haven't tried it already I bet they could grow a few pups up and "challenge" them with the various ways the disease spreads. I'd be glad to help in anyway I can. Ray

gautam

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your very warm welcome. I am unfamiliar with the etiquette, and it may take a while to respond to all who have personally welcomed me. In the meanwhile, please consider this note as a very sincere THANK YOU to each one of you.

If am not violating any rules of conduct, may I offer my heartfelt prayers gratitude to the many banana workers, enthusiasts and scientists, embodied in the person and humanitarian soul of Dr. Dirk R. Vuylsteke who was killed in a plane crash in the Ivory Coast (?) in 2000. John Hartman, another banana breeder from the USA and Paul Speijer, a Dutch nematologist died along with him [R. Ortiz writing a memorial piece in PLANT BREEDING REVIEWS, vol.21, p.5-11; Jules Janick ed.].

I have been very interested in his work since both plantains and banana form an important yet invisible safety net in my native agro-ecosystem that has been completely ignored by the so-called Green Revolution in South Asia. When we go to Vuylsteke's successes with his vigorous crossing & hybridization program, we notice that >85% of the crosses have Calcutta-4 as the male parent. Is it not remarkable how a SINGLE Indian landrace has become the foundational workhorse for this first generation of Musa genetics?

That is why my great anxiety to not lose the parallel stocks of the massively vigorous SEEDY congener, which has yet to be sufficiently characterized. There are so many root studies and nutritional genetics research that have not even been put into place. I have noticed that only when the interests of commercial agriculture and subsistence agriculture can be demonstrated to be on the same page that research funds become available.

Musa is lucky to have vast commercial interests threatened with many of the same ills that plague the small farmer. Even more luckily, unlike grains, Musa research is valuable AT ALL SCALES: progress in knowledge helps the "landless" possessing but a single clump just as much as it does the corporation farming a million stems. Grains, legumes, and annuals are often scale-sensitive: they favor the larger farmer who can afford more market-based inputs. Musa & Palm are amenable to "farm-sourced" inputs,including (and especially) humanure and household waste that othrwise become a huge hazard around the "landless "homestead" that enjoys only a narrow strip of land 1-2 meters around the actual (earthen building).

For long, crazy people like me and lately, the truly extraordinary HELLEN KELLER FOUNDATION [in Bangladesh] have expended enormous effort trying to make these strips produce food and not become midden/waste dumps by default.

In warm, humid climates, the banana is a happy and efficient converter of the types of wastes generated by these households with babies and growing children and no toilets nor any really separate areas to wash. Waste water and waste need an environment and banana and vegetable beds mulched with straw offer a sort of solution.The vegetables chosen are climbers that can make use of the SUNLIT EXPANSE OF THE COTTAGE ROOF and keep their protein rich leaves & fruit completely OFF the dangerous soil. Ditto, the bananas, and sugar date palms that are tapped for sap. Each harvest a niche of the light environment and create a sunflecked environment to prevent oversaturation.

It is simply amazing what change a SINGLE BANANA clump, a SINGLE good quality LIME tree and a SINGLE sugar date palm can bring to the lives of the typical 7-8 members of a struggling household who subsist on rice and not much else. (I won't get into the statistics of the numbers of children blinded by Vitamin A deficiency in green lands]. No other fertilizer or resource is necessary.

That is why researchers like Dr. Vuylsteke and others like him need to be recognized. Their work is beyond description. All could have chosen comfortable, non-hazardous careers in attractive institutions of the world and garnered much more acclaim and dealt with infinitely fewer frustrations and daily torment. This sacrifice was doubly relevant for their families. Yet neither they nor their families stepped back.

Thank you.

gautam

Hi Ray & Darkman,

Thanks very much for your warm welcome. Please refer to my other post re:this. Re: your plant topics:

A. Bunchy Top Virus:

I have written without success to the following. Since I am an Indian, they will not bother replying!! You, on the other, may be assured of a reply, provided you use snail mail. The written word on paper, from a genuine "American" should get a response. Trust me on this.

[There must be a reason why the best scientists can only flourish in the USA, right?]

The gentleman below is SUPPOSED to run the Banana cv. Kanthali project. This is something very close to my heart, BUT.......

Prof. Md. Abu Hasan
Project Leader, Banana
B.C.K.V. ( abbreviation for below)
Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya ( means Agricultural University)
PO Krishi Viswavidyalaya
Mohanpur, District Nadia,
West Bengal 741252
INDIA

mdahasan_bckv@yahoo.com

also write to the:
Chair, Dept. Horticulure,


Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya
PO Krishi Viswavidyalaya
Mohanpur, District Nadia,
West Bengal 741252
INDIA

Either of these entities should help. They know how to find the seeds easily. Import of seeds is easy. A buzzillion Indo-US programs going on all the time.

Herb Aldwinckle at USDA-ARS, Geneva, NY, has a good program with the Papaya Ringspot Virus. I have a brief acquaintance with the UHawaii Taro breeding people, re: virus curing.



B.
The Director,
National Research Centre for Banana,
Thogamalai Road,
Thayanur Post,
Trichy - 620 102.
Tamil Nadu.

These people are into south Indian varieties, some good ones. Indian Institute of Horticultural Research [IIHR], Bengaluru, has cv. Kanthali, but few outside Nadia, 24 Pargana districts in West Bengal mess around intensively with the BIJOO/Seedy landrace.


Phoenix sylvestris: Thanks for a fantastic picture. You don't know how much I appreciate this!!

I should be very interested in learning the provenance. CA Huntington Garden seed?

US stocks P.s. reputedly hybridized with P.canariensis? True? Urban legend?

If you ever taste the high quality first flush golden syrup [made about now] from this palm, you will throw aside Maple Syrup forever. Then, the Late Harvest jaggery called PATALI is the most intense Maple Sugar you may imagine.If you have Bangladeshi friends from districts MADARIPUR, JHENAIDAHA, JESSORE or FARIDPUR in that order, please request them to get you 1) pure unadulterated NOLEN & KHEJUR PATALI GOOR. They will consider it a huge honor, that someone knows such specific details of their country and has entrusted them with the privilege of introducing their nation. I meant to say, "order" them to get you stuff from the districts in the order I mentioned. They will LOVE being "ordered" this way. It will be a true honor. The poorer and more marginalized they are on the social scale both here & at "home", the more gratified they will feel by the chance to show off their motherland to a stranger, and the better their rural contacts!!

Likewise, if you know anyone from West Bengal, demand the PURE stuff from NADIA or North 24-Pargana district.

Your tree is doing so well in its confined space! In the wild, it would have been growing a massive root system. Just as a joke, I would say, that tree is nearing 7 years and is more than ready to tap. On deep alluvium, you would get 15 liters of sap with up to 14 % total saccharose, per tap, at least 3 taps/month. I have a 500 page monograph on the palm, and its utility in modern intensive agriculture!! It is TODAY in its unimproved state at minimum 3X, to 9X more productive AND efficient than sugarcane, especially subtropical cane.

In Australia, cane swallows up EACH YEAR more than 55K hectares of virgin tropical forest owing to SOIL SICKNESS in cane lands. Yet AU loses >> AU$200 million/yr to this syndrome, plus a HUGE environmental cost. The sugar date LOVES a touch of frost & hence could be grown much further south than tropical Queensland. Likewise, Argentina and Southern Brazil are LOW Sugar Recovery areas for cane, on account of short growing seasons & cold weather. Here too, as also in southern China & southern Africa, the palm could perform wonders.

Australia has Graham Farquhar & his spiritual descendants + the photosynthetic groups, plus Passioura and his root studies group. Brazil has EMBRAPA. I should urge these two get together and critically assess this species, a la the oil palm. Sugar will become a strategic resource 25-40 years hence, and we cannot have sugar crops that are destructively harvested e.g. cane, beet:that is not thermodynamically sustainable given our limited water & energy supplies.

Sugar(S) will be as strategic as petroleum because we shall have small vehicular fuel cells with on-board formation driven by extremozymes, cellulosome & fluid-bed technology etc. [see DUMESIC, U. Wisconsin]. The time for WESTERN nations to plan is NOW, because things take time. The history of the sugar beet is most enlightening in this respect. Between 1805 to 1869, a plant with <1% sugar, drove out the sugarcane in Indian and Javanese markets.

raygrogan

My contacts at UH are the folks who produce disease-free keiki in the tissue culture lab. (I have BBTV in my neighborhood, so one of the ways that works well is to start with good clean plants, grow them up medium size, then plant out. Then spray oily-soapy water on the new leaves to keep aphids from spreading the disease.) Sometimes I get to chat with Eden Perez. A paper by her sez Williams much more susceptible to BBTV 79% vs 39% in dwarf apple. http://nature.berkeley.edu/~rodrigo/...s/Hooks09b.pdf

What I could easily do to help introduce BIJOO is to just tell them about it next time I am there picking up plants (prob Jan). If you send seeds I could take them, or just wait and see what they say. They are working on resistant plants so maybe they already have something good to breed with.

If you are dying of curiosity about the BBTV resistance, I could plant some seeds in a very diseased area and watch to see what happens.

Just to ask dumb questions, how does one breed bananas? I can do easy things like recognize the male and female flowers, and bag the bunch, etc. But what, use the Bijoo as the female and apple as the daddy? To get seeds, then grow up a million, work 2 years, start evaluating? But you said the Calcutta-4 was the male in the other crosses, with (presumably) seedless females? How to get offspring?

Ray