Under-rated super-foods bananas and plantains upstaged the mighty mango at this year’s edition of the Konkan fruit fest, which over the last few years, has been showcasing tropical fruits from the sunny, tropical strip of rugged terrain flanking the Arabian sea.
Organisers of the recently concluded Botanical Society of Goa say, that they want to use the aegis of the festival, to underline the significance of bananas and plantains, which are a rich and cheap source of healthy nutrients like vitamins, manganese and potassium and easy to grow all year-round.
“The festival’s theme this year was bananas and plantains. Most people use the two terms as synonymous and they may not be wrong. However, the term plantain is used for those bananas that are normally cooked and eaten. These plantains are cooked into banana halwa (sweetmeat) or fried as banana chips, but can be eaten like bananas when they are overripe. One can go bananas while discussing plantains,” Secretary of the Society Miguel Braganza told The Pioneer.
“Bananas are a 12-month crop, like sugarcane. Each plant produces young plants called suckers and tissue culture protocols are available and in use for rapid multiplication. It is a crop that can be re-established within two years by tissue culture even if completely destroyed due to cyclones, insect pests or disease,” Braganza said, adding that bananas are a climate-smart food crop for tropical regions.
However, the organiser explained that despite such impressive stats, unfortunately the fate of bananas in the country compares with the age-old Indian maxim “ghar ki murgi dal barabar”. “It is a good energy source in form of starch and sugars and contains more minerals and vitamins than apples, which in any case are temperate fruits. Bananas are common in India and treated with disdain, he said.
As its tribute to the humble fruit, the festival presented a wide range of bananas grown in the Konkan region, from Goa to Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Some of the varieties of bananas which were presented at the event, were the locally grown saldatti (thick peel), figue da orta or butter banana, the cardamom-flavoured ‘velchi’ and myndoli and nendran from Goa, the tangy hazari or sauru-balen, red-skinned bananas from Karnataka, among many others.
The three-day event, which showcased other local fruits like kokam, mango in the past, also offered training sessions on curries made from the banana flower, frying banana chips as well as host a banana-eating competition for its patrons.
“Student volunteers also introduced fruit skewers where diced fruit were served like cocktail skewers. It was also an opportunity for visitors to taste different varieties of bananas or mango in smaller quantities for the price of one fruit. There were also fruit salads, juices, shakes, ice-creams, frozen desserts, wines, vinegar, squash, syrup, jams, pickle, etc of various fruits,” Braganza said.
The festival, Braganza said, had in its past editions served as a platform which has launched products like agave, fruit wines, etc, processed Konkan products, etc. The annual event also served as platform for sale of locally manufactured processed and homemade fruit-based products.