History of Bananas

 

Bananas first originated in South East Asia and were different to the domestic type of bananas that we have today. There were two types of wild bananas, Musa Acuminata and Musa Balbisiana which were regarded as inedible unless cooked because of the numerous seeds. In about 650AD Musa Acuminata and Musa Balbisiana were cross bred and through this process, the bananas became more seedless and like the ones that we have now.

 

When Alexander the Great discovered bananas in the Indian Valleys during his invasion on India in 327BC, he introduced them to the rest of the world. By 200AD, bananas had spread to China but were regarded as a strange and alien fruit. The banana only became popular in the 1900s.

 

The first banana plants in Australia were brought in the 1800s by Chinese migrants and migrants from Fiji - first in the early 1800s to mid 1800s in Carnavon WA and then in Northern Queensland in the 1870s. The first banana plants were grown as decoration, not for selling or eating. But soon, in the 1880s Chinese workers from the goldfields in North Queensland started banana plantations around Cooktown, Port Douglas, Cairns, Innisfail and Tully. In 1891 a man called Herman Riech started banana plantations from some of the plants in Queensland, in Coffs Harbour, NSW and by 1919, the banana plantations became quite extensive. Banana plant diseases stopped or decreased growing bananas in some regions but banana plants thrived in Northern NSW, Queensland and WA.