Enset (Ensete ventricosum) landrace database

 

Enset (Ensete ventricosum), commonly known as the "false banana," is a giant herbaceous perennial belonging to the family Musaceae. Unlike bananas, enset is cultivated for its starchy pseudostem and underground corm. It serves as the primary staple food for approximately 20 million people in southwestern Ethiopia, making it one of Africa's most important indigenous food security crops. Over 1,700 named landraces have been documented across 27 linguistic communities. This diversity encompasses variation in morphology, food quality, disease resistance, fiber quality, and medicinal properties. Farmers actively maintain landraces suited to local environments and cultural needs. The current landrace collections consolidates records from 32 sources (1991–2017), and aims to generate an accessible enset landrace database with associated annotated attributes that can be freely utilized by researchers, breeders, conservationists, and policymakers.