Genetic Banana Breeding Breakthrough Helps Crack Century-Old Puzzle

Scitech Daily ^ | June 19, 2025 | Nanjing Agricultural University The Academy of Science

[Red Badger]

A new genome mapping model uncovered 62 key trait loci in bananas, overcoming chromosomal barriers and aiding future crop improvement across complex plant genomes.

Bananas are a dietary staple for millions of people, but their cultivation faces serious threats due to limited genetic diversity and significant breeding challenges. In a major scientific breakthrough, researchers examined more than 2,700 triploid banana hybrids to uncover the genetic basis of 24 important traits related to yield, plant structure, and fruit quality. By using a high-resolution SNP dataset along with an adapted genome-wide association study (GWAS) model, the team identified 62 genomic regions associated with these traits, known as quantitative trait loci (QTLs).

Many of these QTLs would have gone undetected using conventional methods because of the large chromosomal rearrangements found in banana genomes. These findings provide a valuable genetic roadmap for improving banana varieties and offer new strategies for breeding crops with complex genomes.

Breeding bananas is notoriously difficult. Most commercial bananas are sterile triploids, which means they reproduce without seeds and have limited genetic recombination, along with long and slow growth cycles. Further complicating breeding efforts, many banana varieties contain large chromosomal rearrangements that interfere with inheritance patterns and make it difficult to identify trait-linked genes.

Although there are thousands of banana cultivars globally, production is dominated by just a few, such as the widely grown ‘Cavendish’, making the entire crop susceptible to pests and environmental changes.

While GWAS has revolutionized genetic research in many crops, it has been less effective in bananas due to these genomic barriers. As global food systems face mounting challenges, understanding and addressing the complex genetics of bananas has become more urgent. To tackle this, researchers focused on developing more effective models for identifying useful genetic traits.

[21twelve]

The photos of the brown ones look like what I recall eating. I see that they do grow wild on the mountain hillsides where we were working. Thanks for that link.

The link below is to the same (or similar?) banana where one can buy the seeds and they grow in temperate climates. I have no idea if they are allowed into the USA or not.

https://onszaden.com/musa_itinerans_var_formosana