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Originally Posted by Kevin
Thanks everyone! Especially Gabe15 for that very thorough, if still a little confusing, explanation. It is rather compplex, and thanks for trying to explain it. Wouldn't it just be easier to classify then as seedless and seeded bananas? If it's true that all bananas can be eaten, then just make groups that are better for eating raw, ones that are better for cooking, and ones that have lots of seeds. I don't see why you couldn't just take a seeded banana, take the seeds out, and eat what is left raw, or cook it up. Don't we already have bananas that are better cooked than eaten raw? So, really, there is no such thing as a 'non-edible' banana, rather, like ewitte said, it is an issue of taste and annoyance (seeds). Who came up with these terms anyway?
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It might be easier for the hobbyist to classify as seeded and seedless, but the scientist needs to have classifications that make sense and are accurate, regardless of how easy they are to comprehend Again, these concepts can be difficult to grasp without intensive study and experience, but trust me, it all makes sense and is logical.
The difference between cooking bananas and raw eating (dessert) bananas is almost nothing, it is mainly based just on cultural use in specific regions. All edible bananas are initially very starchy and can be cooked nicely when green, some become sweet when they ripen, but some stay starchy or ripen in a different manner and lend themselves nicely to cooking even when ripe. Many edible bananas called cooking bananas can infact be eaten raw when ripe, they are just usually not due to cultural preference, and I've never had a cooked unripe dessert banana that didn't come out fine (and I've tried quite a few of them).
Like I mentioned before, a wild, seeded banana is not like an edible banana with seeds, there is much less pulp, in most cases not enough to justify removing the seeds and eating just the pulp. Imagine a fruit the size of your thumb in which 90% of the mass inside the skin is big hard seeds. By the time you get the seeds out, any free pulp is usually in tiny bits stuck to your hands and underneath your fingernails.
The term edible cultivar is used because (although not perfect) it is better than saying seedless (because as mentioned before, not all bananas without seeds are parthenocarpic or cultivated for food, seedlessness is a state of the fruit, but not a good descriptor for the cultivar as it varies with circumstance). When you think of the term edible cultivar, this means a cultivated variety (culti...+var...) which has been selected for eating (edible). This selection was deliberately made by people for the use of the people so we can eat the fruit easily.
I know these are not easy concepts, but this is the way bananas are, and if you ever get involved in banana science or research, this is all standard.