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50 free Banana trivia questions with answers. Bananas are botanically berries, grow on the world's largest herb, and were domesticated in New Guinea thousands of years before anyone in Europe had seen one. This quiz covers the whole story of the fruit: the two wild species behind every seedless clone, why the Gros Michel vanished and why the Cavendish is next in line, how ripening rooms and a paper bag with an apple do the same job, and the strange radiation unit named after the fruit. The second half is about what people have done with bananas: the United Fruit Company, the coining of 'banana republic', the Chiquita mascot, Warhol's peelable cover, the duct-taped Comedian that sold for $6.2 million, Bananas Foster, the Latrobe banana split, Day-O, banana slugs, B1 and B2 and the Minions. Every answer was checked against a published source, mostly Wikipedia and official pages, and the citation sits under each question. Easy ones warm you up; the expert ones on TR4, gene banks and Roman physicians are there to settle arguments.
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Q 01Botanically speaking, a banana is which type of fruit?
A berry
The fruit has been described as a 'leathery berry', and the flesh can be split lengthwise into three sections matching its three carpels.
Q 02The banana 'tree' is not a tree at all. Botanists rank it as the world's largest what?
Herb
What looks like a trunk is a pseudostem of tightly packed leaf stalks, and the sheathing leaves can grow up to 1.6 metres a day.
Q 03Bananas belong to which plant genus?
Musa
The genus sits in the order Zingiberales alongside ginger, and around 85 species were recognised as of 2025.
Q 04Nearly every edible banana descends from two wild species: M. acuminata and which other?
M. balbisiana
Both species were first described by Luigi Aloysius Colla, and their hybrid carries the name Musa x paradisiaca.
Q 05Cultivated bananas are seedless clones that typically carry how many sets of chromosomes?
Three (triploid)
The odd chromosome count is a big reason breeding is so hard: one Honduran project got only about 15 seeds from 30,000 hand-pollinated plants.
Q 06Bananas were most likely first domesticated on which large island?
New Guinea
Papuans were cultivating seedless Musa banksii there before Austronesian speakers arrived and carried the crop across the oceans.
Q 07The English word for the fruit is thought to come from banaana in which language?
Wolof
The genus name Musa may in turn trace back to the Arabic mauz, itself possibly a wandering word from the Trans-New Guinea languages.
Q 08The genus name Musa may honour Antonius Musa, physician to which Roman emperor?
Augustus
Linnaeus created the genus in 1753 and originally split bananas into just two species by how they were eaten.
Q 09Which two countries were the world's largest banana producers in 2022?
India and China
Together they grew about 26% of a 179-million-tonne crop, and most of it never left the country: the vast majority of the world's bananas are eaten locally.
Q 10Which country supplied roughly 36% of the world's exported bananas in 2016-2018?
Ecuador
It has been a leading producer since 1953, helped by a warm, wet climate and no hurricanes to flatten the plants.
Q 11The tiers of fruit that make up a banana bunch are known by what name?
Hands
A bunch has around nine of them with up to 20 fruits each, and can weigh anywhere from 22 to 65 kilograms.
Q 12Export bananas are picked green and ripened in sealed rooms filled with which gas?
Ethylene
The gas triggers amylase, which turns starch to sugar, and pectinase, which softens the flesh; the fruit itself makes it naturally as a ripening hormone.
Q 13To ripen a green banana faster at home, seal it overnight in a paper bag with which of these?
An apple
A tomato works too; both give off the same ripening gas the fruit uses on itself.
Q 21The 'banana equivalent dose' of radiation is based on which isotope in the fruit?
Potassium-40
One dose is usually taken as about 0.1 microsieverts, and a truckload of the fruit can trip radiation portal monitors at U.S. ports.
Q 22The main compound behind the aroma of a fresh banana, sometimes sold as 'banana oil', is which ester?
Isoamyl acetate
The same compound flavours circus peanuts and pear drops, and the old Gros Michel contained more of it than the Cavendish does.
Q 23Abaca, a banana species grown for its fibre, is the source of which rope material?
Manila hemp
The plant is Musa textilis, endemic to the Philippines, and its saltwater-resistant fibre is still specified for lifeboat lines.
Q 14The supermarket Cavendish banana is named after William Cavendish, the 6th holder of which title?
Duke of Devonshire
His gardener Joseph Paxton grew a shipment from Mauritius in the greenhouses at Chatsworth House around 1834 and won a medal for it.
Q 15The Gros Michel, the export banana that ruled until the 1950s, was known in English by which nickname?
Big Mike
Its thick peel and dense bunches made it a superb shipper, which is why its loss to disease was so painful for the trade.
Q 16Panama disease, which wiped out the Gros Michel plantations, is caused by a soil fungus of which genus?
Fusarium
It is resistant to fungicides and its resting spores can survive in the soil for up to 30 years, so control comes down to quarantine.
Q 17Where was TR4, the Panama disease strain threatening the Cavendish banana, first identified?
Taiwan
From there it spread through Asia, reached Jordan in 2013, Mozambique in 2015 and finally Latin America in 2019.
Q 18Panama disease was first reported in 1876 in which country?
Australia
It only earned its name decades later, when it began devastating plantations in Panama and Costa Rica in the early 20th century.
Q 19Which country hosts the world's largest banana gene bank?
Belgium
Because cultivars are seedless, samples are kept as test-tube plantlets and as meristems frozen in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 C.
Q 20Bananas curve upward toward the light as they grow. Which plant hormone drives the bending?
Auxin
Once the leaf canopy dries and sunlight hits one side, the hormone migrates to the shaded face and makes those cells grow faster, a case of negative geotropism.
Q 24The 1899 merger that created United Fruit joined the Boston Fruit Company with whose banana business?
Minor C. Keith
He had started planting bananas to feed the workers building his railroad in Costa Rica, then became the new company's vice-president.
Q 25Cuyamel Fruit founder Sam Zemurray was known by which nickname?
Sam the Banana Man
He started out buying overripe bananas from United Fruit to resell, and in 1933 staged a hostile takeover of the giant that had bought him out.
Q 26After United Fruit lobbied against land reform, a 1954 CIA-backed coup toppled which country's government?
Guatemala
The company was the country's largest landowner and had even run its postal service in 1901; the coup did not save it from U.S. antitrust action in 1958.
Q 27Which American writer coined the term 'banana republic' in his 1904 book Cabbages and Kings?
O. Henry
The book's fictional Republic of Anchuria was written while he was hiding out from a U.S. embezzlement charge.
Q 28Cabbages and Kings drew on its author's six months hiding in which banana-exporting country?
Honduras
The country later saw the archetypal 'banana republic' coup, when Zemurray's private army installed Manuel Bonilla in 1911.
Q 29Latin American journalists nicknamed United Fruit el pulpo, meaning what?
The octopus
The Dulles brothers, one Secretary of State and one head of the CIA, had done legal work for the company for decades.
Q 30In December 1928 troops fired on striking United Fruit workers in the town of Cienaga, in which country?
Colombia
Estimates of the dead range from 47 to 3,000, and the 'banana massacre' became a lasting political scandal.