| dc.description.abstract | The family of bananas, or "Musaceae", is does not require any special
introduction to the human race. The present study is a marker based (nuclear ITS,
chloroplast trnL-F and rps16) molecular phylogeny of wild bananas found in India.
The classification of Indian Musaceae has been done earlier in terms of overall
morphology, anatomy of leaves and micromorphological characters of seeds and
pollen grains. However, molecular study is essential for the precise identity of some
problematic taxa in India. Moreover, none of the molecular studies of Musaceae
conducted globally have included Indian bananas. All these reasons validate the
feasibility of the present study.
According to this study, a total of 34 taxa of wild bananas are present in
India, including two species of Ensete and 32 taxa of the genus Musa. About 90% of
India's wild bananas are distributed in the Northeast India. The rest are confined to
the Western Ghats, Eastern ghats and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In contrast
to the traditional classification by the morphological features of wild bananas, our
molecular study found that two sections under the genus Musa viz., Eumusa and
Rhodochlamys should be merged into one section. This study helps to reveal the
actual identity of M. kattuvazhana and reinstatement of M. sabuana and M.
balbisiana var. andamanica from the synonymy of M. balbisiana. In addition, our
study confirms the molecular identity of several Indian narrow endemic Musa taxa
and reveals genetic distance between M. acuminata and M. balbisiana is greater than
between it and ornamental bananas. Character evolution study reveals that bananas
with small pseudostem, erect inflorescence and bright coloured bracts are evolved
from bananas with large pseudostem, pendant inflorescence and dull coloured
bracts. This study also discussed about the pollination switch happened in wild
bananas during the course of evolution. Moreover, the study reveals that the
diversification of Indian Musaceae, Indian Ensete and Indian Musa happened during
c. 60 mya, 39 mya and 36.8 mya respectively. In addition, this study proposed
several wild bananas with prominent agronomic traits for future breeding
programmes. | en_US |
