Banana from True Seed - Europe

Adaptation Projects
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Anybody familiar with leads for a source of true seeds?

As far as getting into potential Landrace projects Im entertaining the idea of not just going-to-seed, but going-Back-to-seed. To begin working with species that have been selected over time to become seedless, or difficult to find true seeds for.

Im also wanting to push the boundaries of perceived propagation limits. Banana is normally associated with the tropics, but I know there are varieties already out there that can tolerate frosts.

Id love to have delicious and healthy bananas growing here in zone 7 Poland. Im sure many of you living in colder climate like bananas, too, but have limited access to quality beyond organic fruits.

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Ill designate this space as a place too log my notes and progress towards developing a cold hardy banana landrace. After doing some research online this is what ive come up with so far:

  • Cold hardy bananas grow back in spring after the temperatures have risen. They can survive winter better when mulch is applied over the remaining crown of the plant.

  • Cold hardy bananas tend to be on the starchier side, and less sweet.

Some notable varieties worth exploring for seeds:

Musa basjoo
Japanese variety
Most Cold Hardy to -10
Seedy fruits
Dies down in winter then regrows in warmer temps

Musella lasuocarpa
Dwarfing
Cold hardy

Musa velutina
Pink
Early blooming seedy fruits
From northeastern India
Tolerates zone 7

Musa helens
Hybrid of Musa sikkimensis and Musa chimi champa
Fruits sweeter than plantians
Seedy
Tolerates down to -3 F

Musa chini champa
Yellow fruit with thin peel
Sweet flavor and soft texture
Zone 8

Dhursay
Frost tolerant
From Karnataka India

Blue Java
Sweet flavor compared to vanilla
Tolerates frosts down to +10 F
Hybrid of Musa balbisiana and Musa acuminate
Has a tolerance to frost, but not cold hardy

Musa sikkimensis
Cold hardy
Sweet taste
Few seeds, so you don’t get that mouthful of BB’s effect

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Well, you KNOW this thread is going to excite me! :smiley:

I live in zone 7, too, so we’re both right on the edge of what bananas can handle. That makes our climates perfect for landracing them for cold adaptability.

Here are some thoughts you might consider.

Musa basjoo: I’ve been told that it’s seedless, and no one has ever been able to get it to make seeds. This, obviously, bums me out extremely. This, obviously, would not stop me from trying to cross it with anything and everything else that flowers at the same time as it.

Musella lasiocarpa: I know very little about this one, except that it’s highly cold hardy and weird. It’s in its own genus! I’ve been told it doesn’t make fruit, but it looks like it does have banana-shaped fruit in a stock photo I found, so it may be possible to get it to do something cool. It may be worth growing and trying to cross with everything else. I’ve been told that some experts are considering moving it to the Ensete genus, so that implies it’s more closely related to the Ensetes than the Musas. If you want to breed with it, maybe try growing it alongside Ensetes.

Helen’s Hybrid: I want that one so badly! (I’ve never seen it called “Musa helens,” but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who do that.)

Musa chini champa: BOY, do I want that one, too. I haven’t been able to find any seeds. It seems to be rare.

Dhursay: This is usually called Monthan. It’s on my list, too.

Blue Java: Also known as Ice Cream. This one is particularly interesting because it’s the most fertile of the seedless bananas. Apparently if it’s pollinated, it’s often quite happy to make a few seeds. That makes it a really good prospect for breeding.

Musa sikkimensis: This is on my list, too!

Here, have a long list of things I’m keeping my eye out for! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Bananas suitable for zones 7a-9a
(arranged approximately from most cold hardy to least)

Seedless – all Musa acuminata or acuminata / balbisiana hybrids:
California Gold banana
Dwarf Orinoco banana
Dwarf Namwah banana
Blue Java (Ice Cream) banana
Misi Luki banana (a.k.a. Mysore / Pisang Ceylon / Pisang Keling)
Raja Puri banana
Grand Nain banana
Dwarf Brazilian banana
Praying Hands banana
Monthan banana
Ae Ae banana

Seeded wild species, Eumusa group:
Musa basjoo (This one is hardy to zone 5! Unfortunately, it seems to be seedless.)
Musa sikkimensis
Musa thomsonii
Musa yunnanensis
Helen’s Hybrid
Musa cheesmanii
Musa balbisana
Musa velutina
Musa ochracea
Musa chini champa
Musa aurantiaca
Musa rubinea
Musa flaviflora
Musa violacea
Musa ornata
Musa laterita
Musa anestor

Seeded wild species, Callimusa group:
Musa johnsii
Musa haekkinenii
Musa beccarii
Musa campestris
Musa hirta
Musa coccinea

From what I’ve read, all the species in the Eumusa group can cross, and all the species in the Callimusa group can cross. It doesn’t seem to be possible to cross outside those groups.

Those are all in the Musa genus. Eumusa and Callimusa are subgenera.

There is also the Ensete genus, which is its own thing. I don’t know very much about them. They’re said to not make bananas, but they sure do have bananas on them in the pictures . . . so my guess would be that they do make bananas, but the bananas don’t taste very good. If so, those could be bred for improvement!

I know little about Musella lasiocarpa except that it exists and it looks really cool.

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I cannot yet envision angry Polish farmers emptying Rumanian cargo trucks full of cheap assed Romanian bananas onto the road because they’re a threat to the local banana farmers as of yet. But it wouldn’t be unthinkable in the future then if it’s up to you.
Someone gave me a banana tree, that someone was given to him a couple of years back which got dangerously big in the hoop house. I was kind of relieved when it died the third winter.
I’ve read this article on Permies ,no a link to it, about a Russian citrus industry that flourished during Soviet times in which they grew in trenches and covering the trees with wood and reed mats which wood get covered by snow to insulate further. And like you say they kept dwarf trees and had developed a special pruning method i forgot exactly what for. But they kept pushing into more and more hostile colder areas year after year.

https://permies.com/t/164098/Russian-Fruit-Trenches

An ex of mine her father grew lemons in the south of France that were cold hardy and produced lemons, which looked awesome, but he said they didn’t taste good. I’ve never tasted them, but people are very little creative i believe when it comes to accepting anything less then perfect or what they expect. They’d happily buy forever chemically bathed lemon fruit that tastes sweet and dismiss their own biological home pure grown and add some honey… Who eats raw lemons?
We’ve had this discussion about taste on ‘do cucumbers ever taste good’ topic.

We have all this science, all this creativity, all this time,all this history with pushing varieties up north and still somehow the best we can come up with is drag bananas halfway over the world and pay people slave wages while cutting down prestine rain forest to impose monocultures of toxically bathed fruit. I’ve never been t the tropics, but people who have been say i don’t know what a real banana tastes like.
There’s a museum in Belgium which hosts the world’s most varieties according to DanSaladin’s “Eating to Extinction.”

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I’ve been told that the most difficult thing about breeding bananas is getting them to flower simultaneously.

Adding to this challenge are these four factors:

  • Bananas start to flower whenever they feel like it. So getting two varieties to sync up is, well, almost impossible. You have to just hope for the right time to come.
  • They have to be hand-pollinated. They’re bat-pollinated in their native habitat, not insect-pollinated, so you can’t count on the birds or bees to do it for you.
  • Banana pollen doesn’t seem to have much of a shelf life, and it doesn’t help to freeze it. So you really do have to have two flowers open at the same time in order to make a cross.
  • Some bananas need to ripen on the plant in order to have viable seeds. Most people in cold climates cut their bunches off when green and have them ripen indoors. If you want to breed them, you might not be able to do that. This means you will have to get them to flower as early as possible, in order for them to ripen outdoors before frost. (It also means you will need to protect those fruits from hungry birds and rodents.)

Insurmountable? Nope! They’re all possible to deal with! But they’re hard, especially that last one. So that’s probably there aren’t more people trying to breed cold hardy bananas.

But I’m totally in favor of doing it, especially since the more people who are working on it, the more successes there will be, and then we can share those with each other and magnify all our efforts and more forward at a greater pace! :smiley:

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Here is an excellent video that talks about breeding Bananas:

And Gabes website: https://www.hawaiibananasource.com/varieties

I think ill be reaching out to him and see where that leads.