Gros Michel banana

Gros Michel, often known as Big Mike, is an export cultivar of banana and was, until the 1950s, the main variety imported to the United States.

Taxonomy

Gros Michel is a triploid cultivar of the wild banana Musa acuminata, belonging to the AAA group.

Its official designation is Musa acuminata (AAA Group) 'Gros Michel'.

Synonyms include:

Gros Michel is known as Guineo Gigante, Banano, and Plátano Roatán in Spanish. It is also known as Pisang Ambon in Malaysia and Indonesia, Thihmwe in Burma, and Kluai hom thong in Thailand.

Description

French naturalist Nicolas Baudin carried a few corms of this banana from Southeast Asia, depositing them at a botanical garden on the Caribbean island of Martinique. In 1835, French botanist Jean François Pouyat carried Baudin's fruit from Martinique to Jamaica.

In the 1950s, Panama disease, a wilt caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, wiped out vast tracts of ‘Gros Michel’ plantations in South America and Africa, but the cultivar survived in Thailand.