Tropicallvr

This has been on the back of my mind for quite some time, maybe some one knows how it works. How do the big companies in India produce so many seeds for export. It's not like they are growing strictly Musa velutina which produces on its own through bisexual pollination.
A. The last of the female flowers gets pollinated by the first male flowers.
B. Insect or other natural pollinators do the work.
C. The work is done by hand, and they are rewarded by many seeds in one banana.

bigdog

I can't imagine that they would be hand-pollinating, but I suppose anything's possible. It is probably just large, non-overlapping populations of Musa being naturally pollinated, and they merely collect the seeds.

mskitty38583

there is a place in china where they have used to much pesticides, killed off all the polinators( even flies) and they hand polinate the pears that are native to that part of china.( its somewhere up in the mountains) the pears are the crop that brings money to that small town. i think it was on the nova (PBS) about the dissapearing honey bees. it takes a group of 15 people, i think it was, to hand polinate 30 trees a day. they also said that they didnt know what they were gonna do, because this younger generation has move closer to the cities to work, and their not sure how the hand polination was gonna get done. most of the population is in their middle 60's and most of the trees on on steep cliff sides. so it might be possible for them to hand polinate the nannas.....just thought id add my two cents in.

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taroking

there is a natural time lag between flowering times on different plants in the same healthy stand. That is to say that when some female flowers are receptive to pollen, another plant, that had flowered slightly before, will have mature pollen to fertilize it. The very first female flowers to open in a given area would most likely not get fertilized unless that species was parthenocarpic

mskitty38583

thats pretty cool to know. i didnt know that. very interesting.

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Tropicallvr

That makes sense. Mother nature has it figured out. I wonder if they rely on that method for rarer species like Musa Helen hybrid, Musa Ornata orange, ect. That probably make hybridization more possible.

valerie@flower

Dehydrated pollen can be stored in a pollen bank. Wild types of banana in India are fertile and produce viable seeds. The wild accessions held in Sri Lanka's gene bank could be used in breeding. The development of new varieties would also make use of mutations as well. Present day varieties rarely produce seeds because they have little or no pollen.
Valerie

bigdog

I've always heard, second-hand, that Musa pollen does not store well beyond a few days. I've never actually found any scientific literature on that though. It would be nice to be able to store viable Musa pollen for months or longer, since it can be so difficult to get two species of bananas to flower at the same time (well, around here anyway!).

One thing that you must take into account is the value of these seeds. When they sell 1000 seeds for $55-65 USD, is that enough to warrant hand-pollinating? Maybe so, I don't know that. In order for that to happen, they have to be able to harvest 10s of thousands of seeds, clean them efficiently and cheaply, package them, etc. They have to pay somebody to do the hand-pollinating too, or do it themselves. I'd be interested to know as well! Kenibreed is a member here now, maybe we can get them to give us some insight.

taroking

does anyone have a seed source direct from the growers? I usually purchase through a one of the seed dealers in Europe, but sometimes I wonder about the quality of the seed, age, moisture content, (too dry or too wet), viability, harvest time, method and temp. during drying time, dormancy etc. All which can have an effect on germination rates.
Pat

bigdog

Kenibreed Plants in India is a big supplier for a lot of the sead dealers. Here is their website. Email them, and they will send you a price list will all of the banana seeds that they have (which is quite a bit more than they list on their website). The only catch is you have to order 1000 seeds of each species.