How to earn more from your bananas

**Taita Taveta county plan to boost banana farming**

Bananas are among the most popular fruits in Kenya.

Harvested bananas either raw or ripe, bananas are usually prone to spoilage and wastage if in plenty and not consumed on time.

This calls for banana value addition to increase the post-harvest shelf life.

Value addition entails the development of innovative products of consumer interest from the harvested produce.

Value addition of bananas helps farmers sell their produce for better prices while ensuring the fruits last longer than their normal shelf life.

Many farmers do not know this but there is quite a good number of products that can be processed from bananas adding value to them other than the mere fresh ripe bananas or the green raw bananas cooked with potatoes as “matoke”.

According to Charles Wachira the founder G-Star banana processing plant, these products include:

· Banana Chips and Crisps

These are made from unripe bananas and mostly the plantain or green bananas that are the cooking bananas.

They are rich in starch and lower in sugars.

They are cleaned, peeled, treated and sliced into thin pieces then deep-fried.

On frying, one gets crisp, yellow chips that are seasoned with salt which can then be packaged into polythene bags.

· Banana Flour

Also made from green mature bananas.

The flour has numerous uses like making porridge when mixed or pure to make chapatis, bread, biscuits, mandazi or bake cakes and health benefits. How is the flour processed?

The bananas are sliced into small pieces with the peelings to maintain the nutrients in the peels, sun-dried until below 10 percent moisture content is achieved, milled and sifted then packaged and stored in a closed, dry place. The flour can be stored for a year.

· Banana jam

A farmer can turn overripe bananas to a sweet and enjoyable jam.

The bananas are mashed, put in a heavy saucepan with lemon juice, and honey, heated until the mixture simmers for 20 minutes while stirring over medium heat then let to cool to room temperature.

It thickens and can now be refrigerated for a week.

· Banana juice

Ripe bananas are blended and milk, orange juice, honey added then stirred.

The juice is now ready to be enjoyed as a tasty, refreshing and healthy drink.

The juice can be pasteurised and packed or used in the preparation of carbonated beverages.

· Banana Powder

This is prepared from ripe bananas.

They are peeled, pulped, homogenised and dried to a moisture content of 2 to 4 percent

This is widely used in making of milkshakes, ice cream preparations or yogurts.

This can be stored for over six months but mostly refrigerated.

· Banana wine and beer

This is made by fermenting banana juice.

For wine, it is fermented with wine yeast.

Fermentation is done for about three weeks then followed by filtration, clarification, and bottling.

The alcohol content is usually from six to twelve percent.