Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

192 Les productions bananières / Bananas and food security – Session 1
(West-) Central Africa. This has to do with the fact that people (of all times, places and
cultures) during their travels, collect and introduce plants which they find interesting,
and the African farmers are no exception to this. Because of the natural environment
(dense rainforest and swamps), the major pathways of spread of plantain cultivars in
Central Africa were formed by rivers, especially by the Congo and Ubangi rivers and their
tributaries. Consequently, those areas that are situated near riverine crossroads and well
within the plantain-growing belt are likely to have received cultivars from all directions.
An example of this is the Ubangi-Congo confluence, from which area a very high number
of plantain cultivars has been reported. The directions from where new cultivars can be
introduced to peripheral areas, on the other hand, are by definition more limited and
plantain diversity will increase more slowly here. This is for instance the case in
southern Nigeria where, going from East to West, plantain diversity decreases
significantly.
A number of areas were identified with exceptionally rich cultivar inventories or with
unusual cultivars, and which had remained largely unexplored so far. For instance, in the
Okondja area in East Gabon both a high diversity and unusual cultivars can be found,
whereas central and southern Gabon and the adjacent area in western Congo are
characterised by a high diversity. Another area hardly explored for plantain diversity is
situated in Southwest Tanzania, where plantain cultivation is a relatively recent
phenomenon, dating from the last couple of centuries only. In spite of this short period
of time and of the limited gene pool on which plantain cultivation was based, a relatively
high degree of diversity has developed here already, due to a high incidence of the crop.
Apart from that, in certain areas a relatively large number of (plants and) cultivars of a
specific type are grown, for example Horn plantains in northeastern Congo-Kinshasa,
Small French plantains in northern Congo-Brazzaville and northern Gabon, or cultivars
with non-Green pseudostems or fruits in south-central Gabon and western Cameroon.
Historical sources
The oldest document to mention the presence of musa in Africa is a 6th century
manuscript written by a Graeco-Egyptian monk, Cosmas Indicopleustis, who sailed to Sri
Lanka from the port of Adulis, near present-day Massawa on the Erytrean coast.
Unfortunately, the value of this document is debatable. Moreover, it is possible that the
author confused African ensete with Sri Lankan musa since, to this day, ensete can be
found growing near Massawa.
The earliest reliable historical records of musa (outside India) are left to us by
Arabian authors and date from the 9th and 10th centuries. From these we get a glimpse
of the westward spread of musa in the early islamic world, as far as southern Spain. By
that time also, Arab witnesses state that musa is already well established on (the
northern part of) the East African coast and on Zanzibar. The first cultivar names
reported from Africa date from the 12th century and were recorded in Zanzibar too.
Three of these names are still used today, either in their original form (sukari AB
“Sukari”), altered (alqnd, an Arabic rendering of Bantu kundu “ripe musa”) or