3.Banana tree growth

3 plant physiology and growth

The banana tree is an perennial tree. This means that it grows for more than two years.  It takes the plant 9 to 12 months before the first flowers appear. The fruits then appear 90 days after the first flower. After fruiting, the pseudo stem dies, but offshoots will normally have developed from the base, so that the plant as a whole is perennial.  

All most all plants in the world are C3 plants and so is the banana. C3 plants are those which fix and reduce inorganic CO2 into organic compounds using only the C3 pathway in photosynthesis while C4 and CAM plants employ both C3 and C4 cycles. In other words, the first classification refers to those plants having C3 photosynthesis, C4 plants employ the C4 photosynthesis, and CAM plants the CAM photosynthesis.

Recent research had pointed out that Photoperiod certainly does affect the banana plant. Photoperiod is the time between sunset and sundown. A longer photoperiod during the  reproductive stage correlate with an increase rate of bunch appearance at the top 8 till 10 weeks later. And an long photoperiod during the mid-vegetative stage hastens the flowering of the plant.

Legume plants such as bananas can’t fixate atmospheric nitrogen. They can fixate nitrogen via the Rhizobacteria. That is an bacteria that nestles on the roots and helps in the process of converting useless N2 into NH3.