why are there seeds in the banana fruit when they cannot germinate if you plant?

Question

why did evolution not delete them?

Answer 1

Most of the bananas that you buy in the store are triploid therefore the chance of having seeds are very low. Second of all, the banana flower is imperfect and therefore requires open pollination. There are also sterility issues with bananas and the reason why they still produce fruit is that they are parthenocarpic meaning they can produce fruit without seeds. The banana plants have not been bred for seedlessness, in fact very few commercial varieties have been bred. They are instead, selections or mutants from wild bananas that have been vegetatively propagated. So, humans have selected seedlessness. The wildtype bananas generally have seeds. Vegetative propagation, that is producing more plants without seeds, is not advantageous and is an evolutionary dead end. Without seed production you do not get new combinations of genes and increased genetic variability. With low genetic variability it allows plant diseases to adapt to the plant and cause harm or kill the plant. This is infact what is happening the in world today with bananas as most of the bananas grown in are the same 'cavendish' type that are susceptible to panama disease. So, what I am getting at is that from a evolutionary or natural selection perspective it is a disadvantage for bananas not to produce seeds
Breeding programs struggle to produce new banana varieties because they need seeds to be produced in order to make improvements in bananas. They generally only get a few seeds per numberous crosses. Second, of all there is a low germination rate, maybe 5% or so. Therefore expect one of 20 seeds to produce a plant.

Answer 2

Natural or wild bananas do have seeds, but the seeds are tiny anyway. Its only those bred for commercial production that appear nearly seedless. So it wasn't evolution, but selective (commercial) breeding that produced the seedless fruit.

Answer 3

Wild bananas always have seeds. The ones commercially grown are from a strain that did not have seeds.

Answer 4

The bananas we eat are practically man-made. They can't grow on their own because the plant that grew them has been engineered to produce more fruit (for consumption) than viable seeds.

Sort of like a mule.

Answer 5

the banana plant does not have any seeds. they are degenerate ovaries of the plant. as entire plant is in triploid condition, there is no fertilization but only parthenocarpy.

Answer 6

those seeds are fertile, they can't develop into a banana tree.

I don't know why do the evolution do not destroy them....