Tinned potatoes

[Oscar's dad]

Do not read if hungry.

(click to show/hide)

The image after the bottle of red reminds me of the view in a full chemical loo from last weekend

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Agreed it isn’t the most appetising food to look at. 

[ian]

Fruit has no place in salads that don't start with the word fruit.

[caerau]

Tomato is sort of a fruit thobut? 

[ian]

It's an honorary vegetable. Like peppers and aubergines.

[caerau]

 


I dub thee - Lord Banana.




Now - you cannot complain 

[ian]

Bananas are, to be fruitily pedantic, berries (strawberries aren't).

That said, commercial bananas are bred not to have seeds and are all vegetatively propagated clones.

[hellymedic]

Bananas are, to be fruitily pedantic, berries (strawberries aren't).

That said, commercial bananas are bred not to have seeds and are all vegetatively propagated clones.

Tomatoes are berries thobut.
Banana is mostly Cavendish strain.
Blackberries aren't berries either...

[Jurek]

Bananas are, to be fruitily pedantic, berries (strawberries aren't).

That said, commercial bananas are bred not to have seeds and are all vegetatively propagated clones.

I thought that bananananas were a herb.
Right or wrong?

[SteveC]

I thought that bananananas were a herb.
Right or wrong?

Right (at least, I remember being told that a long time ago).
They're not a tree, but a herbaceous perennial.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm sure I remember bananas having little black seeds in when I was little. Did we eat a different variety back then (1970s)?

Anyway, getting back to the topic, sort of: what about tinned bananas? I've never seen them but I'm sure someone's had them.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Answering my own questions: not quite.

There are bananas in jars of syrup:
https://www.essenceofthailand.com/BuenasSweetBananas340g.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9L2N-_Df4wIVxbTtCh07iQ12EAYYAiABEgIDpvD_BwE

And canned banana blossom:
https://www.essenceofthailand.com/LamthongBananaBlossominBrine565g.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMInoDYnfHf4wIVDbTtCh0lAAL3EAQYASABEgJXhPD_BwE

[ian]

Bananas are monocotyledon from the ginger family. In the wild they grow from a single fertilised ovary, hence they are a berry (though Cavendish are parthenocarpic triploid mutants, yah!). Tomatoes are indeed berries too. As are kumquats. Cavendish has been the stable variety since the late 1950s when Gros Michel succumbed to Panama Disease. You gets lots of different bananas out in the far east, but they don't travel (as they quickly ripen). Of course as the Cavendish cultivar is a clone, any nasty disease gets it's claws (or rather hyphae) into it, and we'll be banana-less. Lots of people are working on that.

I don't think commercial bananas in the UK have every had seeds in recent memory (technically they do, but they never mature) but they generally are small black seeds.

Finally I'm finding a use for my botany degree!

Apropos of nothing I watched a chap produce a plantain in a bar the other week and then attempt to eat it. He didn't get very far.

In other news, my mum's favourite story was the time she found a tarantula in a box of bananas and it (allegedly) chased her.

[Efrogwr]

Bananas are, to be fruitily pedantic, berries (strawberries aren't).

That said, commercial bananas are bred not to have seeds and are all vegetatively propagated clones.

Tomatoes are berries thobut.
Banana is mostly Cavendish strain.
Blackberries aren't berries either...

Are they consolidated drupes? I think that they are related to raspberries.

[ian]

Top points, blackberries and raspberries are collections of small drupelets.

Basically, fruit are generally classified into drupes or berries. Other than apples and stuff, which are pomes.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I don't think commercial bananas in the UK have every had seeds in recent memory (technically they do, but they never mature) but they generally are small black seeds.

I've definitely eaten bananas in the UK with small black seeds in. I remember wondering what they were! (i was quite small at the time)

[ian]

Maybe they were bugs who had got to your banana first.

Pretty much all commercial bananas are Cavendish and those that aren't are still triploid AAA cultivars (all of which are parthenocarpic because they're triploid – meiosis is disrupted in non-even polyploids.). The A genome is Musa acuminata (there's a B genome, Musa balbisiana).

That said, it could have mutated, it happens – so you end up with a tetraploid AAAA which would have seeds. Wild diploid bananas also exist, but they tend to have small fruit suitable for nomming by bats – most cultivated plants, botany fans, are polyploids as they make for bigger fruit and yields. Wheat, for instance, is hexaploid. Also, breeding for polyploidy is essential when you get sterile crosses in breeding programmes.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Thank you ian. It's genuinely interesting though I do fear you may be slipping into developer speak.  (what sort of developer is another question)

[Oscar's dad]

I think this thread must be in line for an award for going off on a massive tangent. Tinned potatoes to the ins and outs of bananas!  Impressive even by yacf standards!

[ian]

Thank you ian. It's genuinely interesting though I do fear you may be slipping into developer speak.  (what sort of developer is another question)

Well, we are diploid, which means we have two sets of chromosomes (and we make haploid cells, in the down-belows). There are human tissues that can have more than two sets of chromosomes (so are polyploid) but they're somatic exceptions. Most animals are diploid, though a lot of a fish and amphibians are tetraploid. Mutations that affect meiosis often lead to polyploidy, in most cases it leads to infertility or is fatal to any zygote.

Plants are a bit more flexible, more so when we breed them – wheat, for instance, is effectively three different organisms crammed into the same package, hence hexaploid (three diploids).

To put things back on track, most commercial potatoes (like the kind you find in tins) are tetraploid (but not diploidized, oh no, so have four alleles at each gene locus, frankly a bit greedy but there you go, anything for a crisp sandwich), but potato is quite a good species in which to stupid polyploidy in as they're quite variable in the wild.

Once upon a time botanist and molecular geneticist – I am available for stimulating after-dinner speaking engagements, and ladies (and gents), alas, I'm spoken for.

[Jurek]

I think this thread must be in line for an award for going off on a massive tangent. Tinned potatoes to the ins and outs of bananas!  Impressive even by yacf standards!

It has taken five pages to move from tinned potatos to bananananas.
In the next thread I start, I'll have to try harder.
FWIW I remember the terms 'Monocotyledon' and 'Dicotyledon' from O-level biology.
Unfortunately I cannot remember what either mean.
(other than one of *something* and the other, two of *something* - seed?)

[hellymedic]

I don't think commercial bananas in the UK have every had seeds in recent memory (technically they do, but they never mature) but they generally are small black seeds.

I've definitely eaten bananas in the UK with small black seeds in. I remember wondering what they were! (i was quite small at the time)

Me too!

[hellymedic]

I think this thread must be in line for an award for going off on a massive tangent. Tinned potatoes to the ins and outs of bananas!  Impressive even by yacf standards!

It has taken five pages to move from tinned potatos to bananananas.
In the next thread I start, I'll have to try harder.
FWIW I remember the terms 'Monocotyledon' and 'Dicotyledon' from O-level biology.
Unfortunately I cannot remember what either mean.
(other than one of *something* and the other, two of *something* - seed?)

[Botany backwards]

Cotyledons are seed leaves.

Monocotyledons have one, dicots have two.

Monocots have long thin leaves and include grasses, onions and bulb flowers.

Dicots include most other broad-leaved plants.

This applies to angiosperms, whose seeds are covered.

Gymnosperms have naked seeds and include conifers, like pine.

[chrisbainbridge]

 Interesting to note that bananas are actually dying out. The Cavendish variety which was resistant to the original Panama fungus is not resistant to the latest variant. As the Cavendish variety is now the universal commercial crop, damage to the Cavendish variety is leading to major problems. The fungus has just recently been found in South America and been confirmed in Colombia according to the BBC.

 If they do not find a cure we could see the end of bananas as a commercial crop.

[Oscar's dad]

French tinned food update...

Last week me and Oaky OTP enjoyed pork products with lentils. In fact so keen were we to eat it we forgot to take photos. Next up I have a tin of rabbit with something I can’t identify from the picture on the tin. Might this be a step too far...?

[ian]

Interesting to note that bananas are actually dying out. The Cavendish variety which was resistant to the original Panama fungus is not resistant to the latest variant. As the Cavendish variety is now the universal commercial crop, damage to the Cavendish variety is leading to major problems. The fungus has just recently been found in South America and been confirmed in Colombia according to the BBC.

 If they do not find a cure we could see the end of bananas as a commercial crop.

They're not going to find a cure, but they need to find a suitable source of resistance – generally, you'd find a resistant variety and cross it into the line, and then spend a long time breeding out (by back-crossing) the detrimental traits you added as part of the package. Obviously a bit more difficult for a plant cultivar you can't breed. So you have to tinker with the ploidy so it becomes fertile again so you can do this, or (traditionally) mutagenesis (take lots of plantlets and expose them to nasty radiation or mutagenic chemicals and then select for resistance), or proceed to direct genetic manipulation (which would be the better and quicker solution, especially with CRISPR). Of course, then you have consumer issues with GM. I think they'll change their minds when faced by angry gorillas demanding their favourite lunchable.