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Musa balbisiana was first described as a species by an Italian botanist Luigi Aloysius Colla in 1820 based on the type collected from Southeast Asia (India Orientali). Later on brief descriptions were provided by Cheesman (1948) and Moore (1957). This species is very much important from the evolutionary viewpoint as it is one of the two parent plants together with M. acuminata Colla for most of the cultivated bananas of present day. Southeast Asia is regarded as centre of origin of M. balbisiana (Hore et al., 1992) and was also reported from Srilanka, India, Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia, Philippines and New Guinea (Cheesman, 1948; Sulistyaningsih et al., 2014). There is very little variation in this species in the interspecific level and no subspecies has been described so far under it (Subbaraya, 2006). However, subsequent workers described five varieties on the basis of intraspecific variations of the species viz., M. balbisiana var. balbisiana Colla, M. balbisiana var. andamanica D.B. Singh et al., M. balbisiana var. brachycarpa (Backer) Hakkinen, M. balbisiana var. liukiuensis (Matsum.) Hakkinen and M. balbisiana var. elavazhai A. Joe et al. In India the species is widely occurring with intraspecific variations in northeastern states, Andaman and Nicober islands and in some parts of south India. Wild or feral forms of M. balbisiana are considered to possess fertile seeds. But cultivated clones occurring without fertile seeds like “Bhimkol” or “Athiya-kol” in Assam and “Elavazhai” in south India have been proved as distinct commercial varieties in these regions. These two clones cannot be considered as truly wild species due to long time cultivation by the local habitats mainly through suckers and the existence of the species either in wild or feral state is yet to be established (Subbaraya, 2006; Joe et al., 2014). However, the present investigators recorded wild populations of M. balbisiana Colla from Dima Hasao district of Assam. During the field work conducted between the years 2012-14 for taxonomic study on the genus Musa L., the authors collected certain specimens of seed propagated plants occurring wild and in semi-domesticated state in Assam which are known as “Sepa-athiya”. It differs from M. balbisiana in a number of attributes. The plants are propagated both through seeds and by suckers. Further, unlike the cultivated clones of M. balbisiana, the fruits of the collected plants are not edible because of the presence of numerous compactly arranged seeds with scanty flesh. However, the other parts like pseudostem, leaves and inflorescence are used as that of M. balbisiana. Considering the above differences of the collected specimens with that of M. balbisiana, a new variety viz., Musa balbisiana var. sepa-athiya is proposed and described.

A new variety of <i>Musa balbisiana</i> Colla from Assam, India