DE LANGHE, E., HŘIBOVÁ, Eva, CARPENTIER, S., DOLEŽEL, Jaroslav, SWENNEN, R. Did backcrossing contribute to the origin of hybrid edible bananas? Annals of Botany. 2010, 106(6), 849-857. ISSN 0305-7364. E-ISSN 1095-8290

Bananas and plantains (Musa spp.) provide a staple food for many millions of people living in the humid tropics. The cultivated varieties (cultivars) are seedless parthenocarpic clones of which the origin remains unclear. Many are believed to be diploid and polyploid hybrids involving the A genome diploid M. acuminata and the B genome M. balbisiana, with the hybrid genomes consisting of a simple combination of the parental ones. Thus the genomic constitution of the diploids has been classified as AB, and that of the triploids as AAB or ABB. However, the morphology of many accessions is biased towards either the A or B phenotype and does not conform to predictions based on these genomic formulae. On the basis of published cytotypes (mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes), we speculate here that the hybrid banana genomes are unbalanced with respect to the parental ones, and/or that inter-genome translocation chromosomes are relatively common.