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A blog on landscapes selected the Kuk Early Agricultural World Heritage Site as its landscape of the week. The site is one of the earliest known landscapes in the world where agriculture was practiced and the earliest evidence for the domestication of plants, including banana, in the Pacific region.

The East African has an article on one of Uganda’s most celebrated food technologists, Rev Dr Florence Muranga.  The founding director of the Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development is famous for turning matooke (banana) into shelf-stable flours, thus preventing millions of tonnes of the crop from going to waste.

Australia's Queensland University of Technology and India's Department of Biotechnology will collaborate on the development of iron-rich GM bananas. In an interview, the project leader James Dale said  that bananas were a good vehicle for addressing iron-deficiency anaemia in a country where a large proportion of the population are vegetarians, which means that they do not get iron from a meat diet. They do however consume a considerable amount of bananas.

Miguel Dita of Bioversity International describes to BBC Mundo the difficulties of controlling black leaf streak disease, better known as black Sigatoka.

Chiquita celebrates its 20-year collaboration with the Rainforest Alliance, one of the longest sustained relationships between a company and an NGO.

The announcement that a new banana species, Musa serpentina, had been discovered, sparked a discussion on its identity.

Bill Gates blogs about efforts to increase the levels of vitamin A and iron in bananas from Uganda.

Recent excavations that contradict previous, but disputed, findings suggesting a first millennium BC arrival of bananas in western Africa will not be enough to settle the issue, argues The Archaeobotanist.

An eye-opening behind-the-scene look at one of New York City’s banana ripening outfit.

While TR4 continues its spread in the Philippines and calls for the creation of a banana research institute intensify, consumers in banana-importing countries worry about losing their breakfast banana.

The growth of banana plants is more sensitive to photoperiod than previously believed, according to a study published in Functional Plant Biology. The authors analysed data from Puerto Rico, Ivory Coast, New South Wales in Australia and South Africa.

CIRAD scientists tracked the movements of weevils to simulate how they attack their host. The computer model can then be used to test which agricultural practice is most likely to halt the banana pest in its tracks.

The geographical indication Banano de Costa Rica has been registered under the Lisbon Agreement administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their International Registration offers a means of obtaining protection for an AO in the contracting parties to the Lisbon Agreement (27 countries as of 14 October 2011) through a single registration.

Farmers in Rwanda are experimenting with intercropping bananas and coffee in a bid to make a better living.

An article in SciDev.net reports that trials done in Egypt have shown that bean, corn and maize crops fertilized with compost made with banana plant residues had better yields and required less water than when other fertilizers were used. In Egypt, where banana plants are usually burned after harvest to make way for another crop, this alternative practice would allow for plants infected with the banana bunchy top virus to be recycled into compost since it would not be used on banana plants.

In a transcribed interview to the US National Public Radio Dan Koeppel, the author of Bananas: The fate of the fruit that changed the world, explains why the export industry is so committed to the Cavendish. But consumers in banana-importing countries are not the only ones eating Cavendish. Half of the bananas grown in the world are Cavendish, of which less than a third are traded internationally. In an article in Saveur, the American author wonders whether a successor to the Cavendish is lurking among the other half.

Dole announced the launch a new Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability website that includes a section on the carbon footprint of its bananas.

IITA scientists developed an alternative to soaking suckers in 50°C water to kill nematodes and weevils: dip them in boiling water for 20-30 seconds. The boiling treatment does away with the need to measure the temperature with a thermometer.

A study confirms the beneficial role of eating bananas to prevent strokes.

Scientists from Brazil have published a study exploring the ability of banana peel to extract lead and copper from water. This ability to gather together trace amounts of copper and lead could also be used to make the metals easier to detect, according to an American environmental engineer speaking to an Australian media.