Originally Posted by PR-Giants (Post 342031)

I recommend growers on the mainland that are interested in breeding bananas use the Manini A'ea'e as the female parent because it's very fertile, and it's a short cycle which means it's fruiting cycle is short. It takes about 2 months between pollinating and planting the seeds that are produced. Plus another bonus is that variegation is often passed on from the mother plant.

This lightly variegated Manini A'ea'e will be made available for free to a member that's interesting in getting involved with breeding bananas. I'll start a thread in the banana plants for sale forum for anyone that's interested.

Originally Posted by 75north (Post 342039)

How often are you getting seeds with the pollinated Manini A'ea'e? Is it in nearly every fruit?

Originally Posted by PR-Giants (Post 341307)

It's important to understand sexual reproduction.

https://letstalkscience.ca/education...t-reproduction

Edible banana cultivars that are pollinated can produce seeds.

Edible banana cultivars that are not pollinated don't produce seeds.

Think of a supermarket banana like a supermarket egg.

If a supermarket egg is fertilized it can produce a chick.

If a supermarket egg is not fertilized it doesn't produce a chick.

Here's some photos of three common edible banana cultivars that will easily produce seeds if there's a compatible pollen source within a quarter mile.

ABB Blue Java







AAB Manini A'ea'e







AA Veinte Cohol










The two most common edible banana cultivar seeds I see for sale on the internet are Blue Java and Manini A'ea'e seeds. But you should be cautious because even though those seeds are very easy to produce there's no way to be sure the seeds actually originated from those fruit. And even if they did, it's important to realize they will not produce Blue Java or Manini A'ea'e seedlings. Each seed, if it germinates will produce a new variety and you won't know if these new varieties are seedless or seeded until after they bear fruit.

Originally Posted by PR-Giants (Post 341386)

Here's a photo of a couple of the hybrid Blue Java seedlings from the seeds in the previous photos.

This is really easy and once you get involved with breeding bananas you'll probably have thousands of new varieties. I stopped naming and counting them a long time ago.






I always recommend starting with the easy and highly fertile crosses first and later try the ones that are more difficult.

Just because someone says something is difficult doesn't necessarily mean it's difficult. I've been sharing a lot of my variegated banana seeds and they are super easy too germinate but there's always going to be people that will think it's difficult. I always tell people to throw them on the ground somewhere and remember where you threw them. A few days ago I received a photo from an org member that threw the seeds outside before winter and they just sprouted now. It's really cool to grow variegated bananas from seed.

Originally Posted by PR-Giants (Post 342173)

Growing variegated bananas from seed and sharing those seeds is what I really enjoy.

There are many members on this forum that are also growing variegated bananas from seed.

Here's a plant that will get hand pollinated soon.



I recently sent this beautiful offshoot to a collector friend. The mother plant that produced it was grown from seed.

Originally Posted by sirdoofus (Post 342179)

Wow that is a beautiful plant!!

Originally Posted by PR-Giants (Post 342175)

Here's a video from a person that purchased some variegated seeds from us on eBay. It's an interesting video but I only watched it up to where he said the seeds were from a Florida Manini cross. I pollinated the flowers and neither the Florida or Manini were used in the cross. I remember that they inquired about the parentage a few times and my reply was that it was proprietary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUc6f8sADn0