What Vitamins Are in Bananas? B6, C, and More

A medium banana delivers a meaningful dose of vitamin B6, a moderate amount of vitamin C, and smaller quantities of several other vitamins including folate, riboflavin, niacin, and provitamin A carotenoids. Vitamin B6 is the headliner: a single banana supplies roughly a quarter of the daily value. But the vitamin profile of a banana is not as fixed as a nutrition label suggests, because cultivar, ripeness, and how you store or cook the fruit all shift the numbers considerably.

Vitamin B6 Is the Real Star

When people talk about the vitamins in bananas, B6 deserves top billing. A medium-sized Cavendish banana, the variety most commonly sold in North American and European supermarkets, provides around 0.4 mg of vitamin B6, which works out to roughly 25 percent of the recommended daily intake for most adults. That makes bananas one of the more convenient whole-food sources of B6 you can grab on the go, alongside poultry, fish, and chickpeas.

Vitamin B6 is a workhorse in the body. It helps convert food into usable energy, supports the creation of red blood cells, and plays a direct role in brain chemistry. One of its most studied functions is as a cofactor in the production of serotonin, the neurotransmitter involved in mood regulation and sleep. The active form of B6 (called pyridoxal-5′-phosphate) is required by the enzyme that converts a precursor molecule into serotonin itself.¹ That biochemical connection is why bananas occasionally get mentioned in discussions about mood-boosting foods, though the effect of any single food on serotonin levels in the brain is far more modest than headlines imply.

Freeze-dried banana powder, which is increasingly used in smoothies and baking, retains a measurable amount of B6 at around 0.6 mg per 100 grams.² That is a decent concentration, though how much survives depends heavily on the drying method used, a point explored further below.

Vitamin C Content Varies More Than You Would Expect

Bananas are not usually the first fruit people think of for vitamin C. A standard Cavendish banana contains somewhere around 10 mg per 100 grams of flesh, which is modest compared to an orange or a kiwi. But that number is deceptive, because it reflects only the single cultivar most of us see at the store. Across the hundreds of banana cultivars grown worldwide, vitamin C levels swing dramatically.

A study of cultivars grown in Hawaii found that Dwarf Brazilian bananas, sometimes called apple bananas, contained nearly three times the vitamin C of the common Williams variety: about 12.7 mg per 100 grams versus 4.5 mg.³ Another lab measured fresh banana juice at around 20 mg of vitamin C per 100 grams, suggesting that even within a single cultivar the growing conditions and measurement method can shift the result.⁴ The takeaway is that a banana grown in tropical volcanic soil and eaten fresh off the bunch can deliver substantially more vitamin C than the grocery-store Cavendish that traveled thousands of miles in a refrigerated container.

Vitamin C also changes as the banana ripens and during storage. Researchers looking at cold-stored bananas found that vitamin C drops steadily over weeks in refrigeration. In one experiment, a treatment combining arachidonic acid application with low-temperature conditioning kept vitamin C levels at roughly 0.75 mg per kilogram of fruit after 36 days at 0 °C, compared to just 0.30 mg per kilogram in untreated control bananas.⁵ That is a steep drop in both groups, which illustrates why freshness matters for vitamin C content specifically.

The Provitamin A Surprise

Most people would not associate bananas with vitamin A. If you only eat the pale yellow Cavendish, that instinct is roughly correct: cream-fleshed bananas have minimal carotenoid levels. But hundreds of banana cultivars exist with deeper yellow, orange, or even reddish flesh, and many of them are packed with provitamin A carotenoids, the plant pigments your body converts into vitamin A.

The most dramatic example comes from the Fe’i bananas of the Pacific Islands. A cultivar called Asupina was found to contain about 1,412 micrograms of trans beta-carotene per 100 grams, more than 20 times the amount in a standard Williams banana.⁶ Ten yellow- or orange-fleshed cultivars tested in that same study had carotenoid levels high enough to potentially meet half or all of the estimated vitamin A needs of a non-pregnant adult woman through normal consumption patterns. The relationship between flesh color and carotenoid content was strong: the deeper the yellow-orange color, the more provitamin A the banana contained.

In East African cultivars, the range of provitamin A carotenoids was even wider, running from about 560 micrograms per 100 grams in some unripe varieties up to over 10,600 micrograms in certain ripe ones.⁷ The dominant provitamin A compounds were beta-carotene and alpha-carotene, which together made up about 90 percent of the total provitamin A carotenoid content. Other carotenoids like lutein were also present; in fact, the Hawaiian cultivar study found that bananas contained higher concentrations of lutein than of the provitamin A pigments themselves.³ Lutein does not convert to vitamin A, but it is valued for eye health.

This enormous variation across cultivars has caught the attention of researchers working on vitamin A deficiency, which remains a serious public health problem in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. Some banana genotypes are rich enough in provitamin A carotenoids that biofortification programs are exploring both conventional breeding and genetic approaches to boost those pigments in widely grown varieties.⁶

How Ripening Reshapes the Vitamin Profile

Bananas undergo enormous chemical changes as they ripen, and their vitamin content does not sit still during that process. For provitamin A carotenoids, the trajectory is not a simple line going up. Research on bananas and plantains found that provitamin A carotenoid levels peaked at a mid-ripe stage (designated as stage 5 on the standard ripening scale) and then decreased as the fruit continued to ripen toward the fully soft, brown-spotted stage (stage 7).⁸ So if you are eating bananas specifically for carotenoids, the sweet spot is a banana that is nicely yellow but not yet heavily speckled.

Temperature and light conditions during ripening also play a role. A study on the genetic mechanisms behind carotenoid accumulation showed that ripe banana pulp has an unusually high ratio of alpha-carotene to beta-carotene, and that total carotenoid content increased when bananas ripened under light and at higher temperatures.⁹ This means that a banana ripening on a sunny kitchen counter in the tropics is likely building more carotenoids than one sitting in a dim, cool warehouse.

Ascorbic acid follows its own ripening trajectory. Banana juice studies found that vitamin C content varied with both cultivar and ripening stage, with concentrations ranging from 0.45 to 1.40 grams per liter across different cultivars and stages of ripeness.¹⁰ The general trend for vitamin C in many fruits is a gradual decline as ripening progresses and enzymatic degradation accelerates, so greener bananas tend to have a slight edge in ascorbic acid content over very ripe ones.

What Cooking and Drying Do to Banana Vitamins

In many parts of the world, bananas are not eaten raw. Plantains are fried, boiled, or roasted. Cooking bananas are steamed and mashed. Banana flour and banana powder are gaining popularity in Western markets as gluten-free alternatives. Each of these processes affects the vitamin payload, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Cooking generally reduces provitamin A carotenoid levels. The same study that tracked carotenoid content across ripening stages also examined cooking effects and found decreases after heat processing.⁸ Boiling tends to leach water-soluble vitamins like vitamin C and B6 into the cooking water. Frying at high temperatures degrades heat-sensitive compounds further.

For dried banana products, the drying method matters enormously. When researchers compared freeze drying, vacuum drying, and hot air drying for making banana powder, freeze drying consistently preserved the most vitamins. Freeze-dried banana powder retained the highest levels of beta-carotene, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), and ascorbic acid, followed by vacuum drying, with hot air drying coming in last.¹¹ A separate study confirmed this pattern, finding that freeze-dried ripe Nendran banana powder retained about 6.28 mg per 100 grams of vitamin C and 0.606 mg per 100 grams of vitamin B6, higher than spray-dried or tray-dried versions of the same fruit.²

Temperature during drying is also critical for vitamin C. When green banana slices were air-dried, drying at 50 °C preserved about 71 percent of the original vitamin C, while drying at 70 °C dropped retention to below 50 percent.⁴ If you are buying dried banana products and care about vitamin content, products labeled as freeze-dried are a better bet than those made with conventional dehydration.

How Growing Conditions Shape What Is Inside the Fruit

The vitamins in your banana are partly a product of the soil, climate, and farming methods used to grow it. This is an underappreciated point: two bananas of the same cultivar from different farms can have meaningfully different nutrient profiles.

Soil management turns out to matter for vitamin C specifically. A field study comparing banana production under different fertilizer regimes found that replacing a portion of chemical fertilizer with bio-organic fertilizer led to higher vitamin C content in the harvested fruit, alongside improvements in reducing sugar and sugar-to-acidity ratios.¹² The bio-organic treatment also improved soil organic matter and available nutrients, suggesting that healthier soil biology translates into more nutrient-dense fruit. This aligns with a broader pattern seen in agricultural research where soil health and fruit quality track together, though the effect sizes vary across crops and conditions.

Red Banana cultivars, which are increasingly available in specialty grocery stores, illustrate how genetics and growing environment interact. Analysis of Indian banana cultivars found that Red Banana ranked highest in total carotenoid content in the pulp, with beta-carotene specifically measured at about 117 micrograms per 100 grams of fresh weight.¹³ That is roughly double the beta-carotene in a typical Cavendish. Even the banana peel showed high carotenoid levels, a finding that is mostly academic for consumers but relevant for researchers exploring whole-fruit utilization in food manufacturing.

Bananas and Iron Absorption

Bananas are not particularly rich in iron, but they have an interesting supporting role in how well your body absorbs iron from other foods. A study examining the effect of various fruits on iron absorption from a rice meal found that bananas had a mild to moderate enhancing effect on iron uptake. Across the fruits tested, there was a strong correlation between iron absorption and the ascorbic acid content of the fruit, which makes sense because vitamin C is a well-established promoter of non-heme iron absorption.¹⁴

This is worth noting if you eat plant-based meals where iron absorption can be a challenge. Adding a banana to a grain-and-legume meal would provide a small but real boost to iron uptake, mostly through its vitamin C content rather than through the iron in the banana itself. The effect is modest compared to citrus fruits, which have much higher vitamin C levels, but it is present and measurable.

Biofortification and the Future of Banana Vitamins

The enormous natural variation in provitamin A content across banana cultivars has turned bananas into a serious candidate for biofortification in regions where vitamin A deficiency is a public health crisis. Conventional breeding programs and transgenic approaches are both under development, aimed at crossing high-carotenoid cultivars with the disease-resistant and high-yielding varieties that farmers already grow.

East African cooking bananas, known locally as matooke, are staple foods in countries like Uganda and Tanzania, where they can make up more than half of daily caloric intake for some populations. Because these bananas are eaten in such large quantities, even a moderate increase in provitamin A carotenoid content could have a meaningful impact on vitamin A status. Some of the most promising cultivars already reach provitamin A levels above 4,000 micrograms per 100 grams of fresh weight in their ripe form.⁷ The challenge lies in getting these cultivars into the hands of farmers at scale while maintaining the taste, texture, and cooking properties that consumers expect. Biofortified bananas with orange flesh have already been developed and trialed, though widespread adoption remains a work in progress.

The color of the flesh is a practical indicator that researchers hope consumers will learn to associate with nutritional quality. The strong positive correlation between deep yellow-orange coloring and carotenoid content means that, at a market stall, choosing a banana with deeper-colored flesh is a genuinely useful heuristic for getting more provitamin A.⁶ It is one of the rare cases where a simple visual cue reliably tracks with a meaningful nutritional difference.

Other Vitamins Worth Mentioning

Beyond B6, C, and the provitamin A carotenoids, bananas contain several other vitamins in smaller amounts. A medium banana provides small quantities of folate (about 6 percent of the daily value), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), and thiamine (B1). None of these will put a dent in a deficiency on their own, but they contribute to the overall nutrient density of the fruit. Dried banana powders preserved by freeze drying retain measurable levels of thiamine and riboflavin, which further supports the pattern that gentle processing methods preserve the broadest range of micronutrients.¹¹

Bananas also contain vitamin E and vitamin K in trace amounts, though neither is present in nutritionally significant quantities. The real nutritional story of bananas lies in the combination: the B6 is genuinely useful, the vitamin C is a nice bonus especially in fresher and less common cultivars, and the provitamin A carotenoids can be substantial if you have access to orange-fleshed varieties. Paired with their potassium, fiber, and natural sugars, the vitamin package makes bananas one of the more nutrient-dense convenience foods available, even if no single vitamin reaches blockbuster levels in the common Cavendish.

1
PubMed Central. A Comprehensive Review of Nutritional Influences on the Serotonergic System
2
PubMed Central. Effect of different drying techniques on the nutrient and physiochemical properties of Musa paradisiaca (ripe Nendran banana) powder
3
ScienceDirect (Journal of Food Composition and Analysis). Ascorbic acid, vitamin A, and mineral composition of banana (Musa sp.) and papaya (Carica papaya) cultivars grown in Hawaii
4
IOSR Journal of Environmental Science, Toxicology and Food Technology. Effect of Edible Coating on Functional Properties and Nutritional Compounds Retention of Air Dried Green Banana (Musa Sapientum L.)
5
International Journal of Food Science and Technology. Arachidonic acid treatment combined with low temperature conditioning mitigates chilling injury in cold-stored banana fruit
6
PubMed. Carotenoid content and flesh color of selected banana cultivars growing in Australia
7
Journal of Food Composition and Analysis. Provitamin A carotenoid content of unripe and ripe banana cultivars for potential adoption in eastern Africa
8
Food Research International. Ripening and cooking processes influence the carotenoid content in bananas and plantains (Musa spp.)
9
Food Chemistry. Lycopene cyclases determine high α-/β-carotene ratio and increased carotenoids in bananas ripening at high temperatures
10
Applied Food Research. Effect of banana cultivars and ripening stages on bioactive compounds and antioxidant capacity of fresh clear low-viscosity banana juice
11
Walailak Journal of Science and Technology. Physicochemical Properties and Nutritional Compositions of Foamed Banana Powders (Pisang Awak, Musa sapientum L.) Dehydrated by Various Drying Methods
12
Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. Productivity and quality of banana in response to chemical fertilizer reduction with bio-organic fertilizer: Insight into soil properties and microbial ecology
13
International Journal of Food Science & Technology. Compositional variation in β‐carotene content, carbohydrate and antioxidant enzymes in selected banana cultivars
14
British Journal of Nutrition. The effects of fruit juices and fruits on the absorption of iron from a rice meal