bananas

**Plant Name: Banana**

**Domestication:**

 * ===**Antonius Musa was the personal physician to Roman emperor Octavius Augustus, and he was the one credited for promoting cultivation of the exotic African fruit from 63 to 14 B.C.**===
 * ===**sailors brought bananas to Europe from West Africa in the early fifteenth century. Its Guinean name banema which became banana in English.**===
 * ===**The original banana has been cultivated and used since ancient times, even pre-dating the cultivation of rice. While the banana spread through Africa, its origins are said to be in East Asia and Oceania.**===
 * ===**The banana was carried by sailors to the Canary Islands and the West Indies, finally it made it to North America with Spanish missionary Friar Tomas de Berlanga.**===

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**Biology:**

 * ===The all year round **habit of bananas puts the crop in a superior position in bridging the ‘hunger gap’ between crop harvests.**===
 * ===**In Africa they provide more than 25% of the carbohydrate requirements for over 70 million people**===
 * ===**Eastern and Southern Africa produces over 20 million tonnes of bananas which accounts for 25.58% of total world output**===
 * ===**Bananas are the fourth most important global food commodity (after rice, wheat and maize)**===



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**Health Benefits:**

 * ===**Helps Depression**===
 * ===**Relieve stress**===
 * ===**Prevents Anaemia**===
 * ===**Reduce Blood Pressure and stroke risk**===
 * ===**Healthy Kidneys**===
 * ===**Healthy Bones**===
 * ===**Protect your eyesight**===

**Interesting Facts:**

 * ===**It is believed by many experts that bananas were the first fruit cultivated by humans.**===
 * ===**In 2001, Britain recorded 300 incidents of injuries related to bananas. The majority of these involved people slipping on banana peels.**===
 * ===**In Uganda, bananas are such a big part of the diet that the same word,** matooke, is used for both "food" and "banana."===