[jurjenh]

This is incorrect. You can't breed fertile bananas from the Cavendish, but if somebody kept records of how they got there (crossing which cultivar with what) we could do the same today starting with the original cultivars, which most likely are still around somewhere...

The problem is finding the cultivars and doing the whole experimental process with specific plants and documenting it... Given that bananas grow fairly quickly it is probably relatively do-able. Just need some land and some volunteers... And flying under the radar of the banana companies :)

[ajross]

I guess that gets to the semantics of what a "banana" is. You can't breed the plant that produces the fruit we buy in stores. Clearly there are ancestors that could reproduce. Yes, it might be possible to recover most of the traits of a commercial banana by breeding them. But it's never been done, so I don't see where the "This is incorrect" bit comes from.