Banana Trivia
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47 free Banana trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
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.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Botanically speaking, a banana is which type of fruit?
A berry
A berry: botanically the banana sits with grapes and tomatoes, while strawberries and raspberries, berries only in the kitchen, do not qualify.
Q 02Although it looks like a tree, the banana plant is ranked by botanists as the world's largest what?
Herb
Herb: what looks like a trunk is really a false stem built from the tightly wrapped bases of its leaves.
Q 03Nearly 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 04Why is the Cavendish banana so hard to breed?
It is seedless
It is seedless: the Cavendish carries three sets of chromosomes, so growers multiply it as identical clones instead of crossing plants.
Q 05Bananas were most likely first domesticated on which large island?
New Guinea
New Guinea: Papuans were growing bananas there before Austronesian-speaking voyagers arrived, and those seafarers later spread the crop, and a word for it, across Asia.
Q 06The English word for the fruit is thought to come from banaana in which language?
Wolof
Wolof: bananas reached Africa from far away in prehistoric times, yet English probably took their name from a West African word, via Spanish or Portuguese.
Q 07The genus name Musa may honour Antonius Musa, physician to which Roman emperor?
Augustus
Augustus: Linnaeus named the genus in 1753, though he may instead have borrowed mauz, the Arabic word for the fruit.
Q 08Which two countries were the world's largest banana producers in 2022?
India and China
India and China: together they grew about a quarter of the 2022 crop, yet world trade takes only about 20 million tonnes of bananas a year, so most never cross a border.
Q 09Which 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 10The tiers of fruit that make up a banana bunch are known by what name?
Hands
Hands: a commercial bunch carries nine or more of them, and it is cut while still green so the fruit can ripen after shipping.
Q 11Export bananas are picked green and ripened in sealed rooms filled with which gas?
Ethylene
Ethylene: the fruit makes this gas itself as a ripening hormone, and it switches on enzymes that turn the flesh's starch into sugar.
Q 12To ripen a green banana faster at home, seal it overnight in a paper bag with which of these?
An apple
An apple: ripe apples give off the same ripening gas that bananas make for themselves, so trapping one in the bag speeds the process.
Q 13The supermarket Cavendish banana is named after William Cavendish, the 6th holder of which title?
Duke of Devonshire
Duke of Devonshire: his head gardener Joseph Paxton raised a shipment from Mauritius in the Chatsworth greenhouses and named the plant after him.
Q 21The main compound behind the aroma of a fresh banana, sometimes sold as 'banana oil', is which ester?
Isoamyl acetate
Isoamyl acetate: honeybees release this same compound when they sting, as a pheromone that rallies other bees to sting too.
Q 22Abaca, 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 23The 1899 merger that created United Fruit joined the Boston Fruit Company with whose banana business?
Minor C. Keith
Minor C. Keith: building a railroad in Costa Rica drew him into the banana business.
Q 14The Gros Michel, the export banana that ruled until the 1950s, was known in English by which nickname?
Big Mike
Big Mike: once Panama disease had wrecked its plantations, the Cavendish took its place as the world's main export banana.
Q 15Panama disease, which wiped out the Gros Michel plantations, is caused by a soil fungus of which genus?
Fusarium
Fusarium: the fungus shrugs off fungicides, so growers can fight it only by keeping infected soil, plants and tools from spreading it.
Q 16Where was TR4, the Panama disease strain threatening the Cavendish banana, first identified?
Taiwan
Taiwan: from there the strain spread across Asia, and in 2019 it turned up on banana farms in the Americas.
Q 17Panama disease of bananas was first recorded in which country?
Australia
Australia: it was recorded there in the 1870s, years before outbreaks hit the banana plantations of Panama and Costa Rica.
Q 18Which country hosts the world's largest banana gene bank?
Belgium
Belgium: the gene bank at KU Leuven stores banana varieties in test tubes and deep-frozen, and shares samples freely with breeders and researchers.
Q 19What happens to a banana plant's trunk after it produces its bunch of fruit?
It dies
It dies: each trunk bears only one bunch, so growers cut it down, and new shoots from the underground stem take its place.
Q 20The '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 24Cuyamel Fruit founder Sam Zemurray was known by which nickname?
Sam the Banana Man
Sam the Banana Man: he got his start buying cheap bananas that were about to go overripe and reselling them to inland grocers.
Q 25After United Fruit lobbied against land reform, a 1954 CIA-backed coup toppled which country's government?
Guatemala
Guatemala: United Fruit was the country's largest landowner, yet the coup did not save it, and U.S. antitrust action forced it to divest in 1958.
Q 26Which American writer coined the term 'banana republic' in his 1904 book Cabbages and Kings?
O. Henry
O. Henry: he fled abroad to dodge an embezzlement charge, then returned home when his wife fell gravely ill.
Q 27Cabbages and Kings drew on its author's six months hiding in which banana-exporting country?
Honduras
Honduras: years later, banana magnate Sam Zemurray backed a mercenary invasion there that made Manuel Bonilla president in 1912.
Q 28Latin American journalists nicknamed United Fruit el pulpo, meaning what?
The octopus
The octopus: its reach extended to Washington, where the Dulles brothers, later Secretary of State and CIA director, had done legal work for it for decades.
Q 29In December 1928 troops fired on striking United Fruit workers in the town of Cienaga, in which country?
Colombia
Colombia: the killings later echoed through Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, where soldiers massacre striking plantation workers.
Q 30The Miss Chiquita mascot was created in 1944 by which cartoonist, better known for Hagar the Horrible?
Dik Browne
Dik Browne: Miss Chiquita was drawn as a banana until 1987, when artist Oscar Grillo redrew her as a woman.