Musa sanguinea

In areas of Arunachal Pradesh and northern Assam, deforestation and degradation of forest habitat is ongoing (Chatterjee 2008). Major drivers of this land use change are shifting cultivation (jhum), encroachment for grazing and timber extraction, and an increase in commercial agricultural plantations (Chatterjee 2008). However, some areas within the range continue to provide pristine habitat: for example, there is minimal threat to biodiversity in the west Siang Districts of Arunachal Pradesh, owing to low human population density and a limited presence of agricultural activities (Gogoi 2014). Although exploitation of this banana for ornamental horticulture is not thought to constitute a threat to the species, it is present on the online market. There is certainly potential for some of these threats, namely commercial agricultural expansion and exploitation, to escalate in severity in the near future; it is therefore recommended that threats to the species are monitored closely.

The genus Musa is listed in Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) which aims to guarantee sustainable agriculture and food security through the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, as well as ensuring the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of their use (FAO 2009). There is one M. sanguinea germplasm accession of wild origin held by the Biodiversity International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre in Belgium, however, the country from which this collection was made is not detailed. Six botanical gardens are listed as sites of ex situ conservation for this species (BGCI 2019). The species has not been recorded from any protected areas but it may be inferred using GeoCAT that its proposed distribution overlaps with protected areas (Bachman et al. 2011, Protected Planet 2019). Häkkinen and Väre (2009) assigned a preliminary conservation status to M. sanguinea of Least Concern.