Here's a post I made on another list that might be of interest
to those on this list:

>Message-Id: <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>From: "Thomas E. Billings" <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 09:29:18 -0800 (PST)
>Subject: [ivu-sci] banana information source

The susceptibility of the commercial banana to diseases,
and the spectre of extinction (as a commercial crop), has
been in the news of late. An excellent resource for info
on bananas is the website of the International Network for
the Improvement of Banana and Plantain, homepage at:

http://www.inibap.org

The website is also available in French, and Spanish--
see links at URL above. The URLs listed below are for information
in English.

They have a press release on the recent news at:

"Just how far are bananas from extinction?"
http://www.inibap.org/new/release2101.doc

They have a variety of publications online at:
http://www.inibap.org/publications/publications_eng.htm

The page above has links to documents on banana diversity,
nutrition, taxonomy, genomics, etc. The "Proceedings,
Monographs, Reports" section of the above URL includes
papers on wild bananas amd organic banana cultivation.
A wealth of scientific information is available there.

PS thanks to Asit K. Ghosh on the rarefruit yahoogroups email
list for publicizing the INIBAP website.

Tom Billings