Unravelling the complex story of intergenomic recombination in ABB allotriploid bananas

摘要

Bananas (Musa spp.) are a major staple food for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. The cultivated varieties are seedless and parthenocarpic clones of which the ancestral origin remains to be clarified. The most important cultivars are triploids with an AAA, AAB or ABB genome constitution, with A and B genomes provided by M. acuminata and M. balbisiana, respectively. Previous studies suggested that inter-genome recombinations were relatively common in banana cultivars and that triploids were more likely to have passed through an intermediate hybrid. In this study, we investigated the chromosome structure within the ABB group, composed of starchy cooking bananas that play an important role in food security.