Are bananas an essential item in South India? puyas (prayers) and celebrations? Yes, people decorate the entrances of temples, weddings and festivals with banana trees at the entrance, offer banana fruits to the deity, and during meals use banana leaves as plates (no spoons or small bowls for liquids).
It is an art to eat rasam saadam on a banana leaf. Although these days one can buy ‘modern’ banana dishes in restaurants, where dried banana leaves are ‘sewn’ for convenience.
a sacred fruit
J. Meenakshi, a science writer, writes on the BBC that the banana is equated with Lord Brihaspati (Jupiter) for its fertility and bounty. Therefore, bananas are considered sacred.
Dr. KT Achaya, in his book, meIndian Food: A Historical Companion (Oxford Univ. Press, 1994) mentions the banana in Buddhist literature around 400 BC. He mentions that bananas came to South India from the island of New Guinea through the sea route. Some have claimed that it was in New Guinea that bananas were first domesticated.
Many varieties
Ms. Meenakshi discovered during her trip from Hyderabad to Nagercoil that there are between 12 and 15 varieties of bananas. These plants grow in hot and humid regions, bordering the Western Ghats.
Given this, where are bananas grown in all of India? Mainly in the southern coastal region of the peninsula, that is, in parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Bengal, and in the northeastern areas such as Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
However, the central and northern regions (Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab) also cultivate the plant, but not in such variety or quantity.
India produces around 29 million tons of bananas each year, followed by China with 11 million. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that around 135 countries grow bananas and banana plants like hot and humid conditions.
Of particular interest are the countries of Southeast Asia, which have up to 300 banana varieties, many of which have visually beautiful plants.
nutritional value
What is it about bananas that has made them tasty, sacred, of medicinal value and nutritional value? The book Nutritional value of Indian foods The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) notes that bananas have 10-20 mg of calcium, 36 mg of sodium, 34 mg of magnesium and 30-50 mg of phosphorus per 100 g of edible matter. All of this makes bananas highly nutritious.
Dr. K. Ashok Kumar and colleagues, in their 2018 article in the Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry have updated the nutritional value of banana cultivars with similar results. It is important to note that of all Indian fruits, bananas are the cheapest, available even in rural areas of most of India all year round, and more nutritious than many other fruits on the market, such as mangoes. and oranges, most of which are seasonal, expensive, and less nutritious than the humble banana.
And banana is not only a tasty and healthy fruit. Even its shell is used as ‘biochar’, which is used both as a fertilizer and to generate electricity. Efforts are underway to use it to drive electric cars.
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