apple banana / banano manzano (FHIA-18)
El híbrido FHIA-18 del grupo AAAB, es un banano con sabor a manzano, agridulce, similar al Prata Anâ del Brasil. Es rústico y resistente a enfermedades. Se consume fresco y procesado. Se encuentra en producción comercial en Cuba y en Perú.
¿El mejor banano del mundo?
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Way too many bananas in the world to proclaim any one the best in the world! They’re not even all used for the same things.
Way too many bananas in the world
Now that I think of it, you probably could have stopped here. If the world banana supply were evenly distributed, and if the bananas tasted decent, there would be no hunger.
It sounds like you’ve tried more than me but personally I’ve never had a fresh, ripe banana I didn’t like, including wild seedy bananas (though they are tough to eat). But I know some do taste a little more strange.
That's great! Banana is good for you! The strange bananas are usually the most worth eating, wouldn't you agree? It's the bananas that taste like banana that are... less so.
As I said I like all of them :)
Have you tried the FHIA-18? Which bananas are your favourites? :)
Nope, I really haven't tried too many and when I have I usually didn't know what they were. My understanding is most varieties only exists in SE Asia, where I've never been. Would love to do a taste test that has more documentation of what I was trying though.
But what I mean is: some bananas are great for eating fresh. Some are best for soup. Others are best for the edible flower, or other uses. Some are more disease resistant, some are more cold hardy, some produce faster. So what does it mean to be the best in this context? I don't think you can have any one be proclaimed the best.
I'm not seriously claiming that this is the One True Lord and Saviour of bananas, but if you tried it, I think you would understand how its ripe fruit, consumed in its raw and unadulterated state, could be considered in a different league of edibility than most bananas. For overall superiority in all metrics, of course there is no single banana cultivar that stands above the rest, but bananas are relatively easy to grow, and eating the fruit generally becomes the most challenging part of growing bananas, so excellence in edibility is very important. Some bananas are VERY banana, you know? Too banana. But this one is less banana, so easier to choke down. If I had a choice between this banana and unripe/damaged/fermented jackfruit, I'd eat the banana, and I can't say that about most bananas. Then again, I guess it depends on the jackfruit...
If you ever do go to SE Asia in order to taste more bananas and escape the gestapo, somewhere a few hundred metres above sea level in Sarawak seems like the sweet spot of safety and durian. Where there's lots of banana, no doubt...
Do you currently grow bananas?
EDIT: But really, FHIA-18 is disease-resistant, cold-tolerant, pretty forgiving overall, and the fruit doesn't even contain much polyphenol oxidase, unlike some other bananas I could mention. Who likes oxidised banana soup? Less of a problem with this one! Maybe not #1 in every category, but high enough in the rankings in enough categories to warrant serious consideration.
Not currently but I’d like to. My current climate is very marginal since it experiences frost every year, though I’ve heard people have done it successfully here. I’d be limited to the most cold hardy varieties and so flavor wouldn’t be my primary consideration, unfortunately.
Based on my reading, dwarf namwah seems to have a good mix of features for my area, so I was looking into that one. But I also live in a city with limited growing space and sunlight so it’s not clear growing tropical experiments is the most useful way I can spend my very limited real estate.
Can you provide more details about the cold hardiness of this variety? Could it survive mild frost, overwinter, and produce fruit?
I didn't know that Dwarf Namwah was cold-tolerant! Do you know its minimum temperature? If you could grow it there, then that would be the one, as Namwah is extremely productive, to the point that the full-size version becomes a bit of a monster if you don't remove most of the suckers. That plant could end world hunger, I can tell you for sure! If you're really low on space though, even the dwarf version might be too costly an experiment... Apparently 'Orinoco' and 'Blue Java' are known for their cold tolerance, but I can't say from experience. Frost... makes for a very risky use of the space.
FHIA-18 grows at up to 1000m in Honduras, but I don't know about frost. Not likely. Tegucigalpa is at about the upper end of its elevation range, and the record low there is well above freezing. Even if it survived, it probably wouldn't fruit well. Apparently the optimal mean temperature is 28°C, so...
I wouldn't advocate for everyone to move to the tropics, but for the people who want to live peacefully and not depend on an inherently flawed economic system for their survival, life would be easier in the tropics. Especially if you like bananas...
I don’t know the exact tolerance but I think it’s somewhat comparable to blue Java. So it can take a little frost but serious cold would kill it to the ground and prevent fruit production.
Good to know. I will look into this...