The morphological, physical, and chemical characteristics of 23 unripe cultivated varieties of Colombian Musaceae were assessed. Fresh pulp dry matter helped to discriminate the following consumption subgroups: FHIA dessert hybrids (hydes: 24.6%) < dessert bananas (des: 29.4%) < nonplantain cooking bananas (cook: 32.0%) < FHIA cooking hybrids (hycook: 34.2%) < plantains (pl: 41.1%). Banana flour starch content on dry basis (db) varied from 74.2 to 88.2% among the varieties, with: pl: 86.5% > cook and hycook: 84% > des: 81.9% > hydes: 79.7% (p <or= 0.01). Flour pH varied in the range 4.8 to 6.2, with the highest pH for the plantain subgroup (5.6), which also had lower titratable acidity than those of the cooking banana and FHIA groups with 7.9, 13.6, and 15.6 mEq H(+)/100 g db, respectively (p <or= 0.05). pl and hycook presented the highest glucose and fructose contents at 0.8% and 1.5% (p <or= 0.05). No significant differences were observed between the groups in proteins (3.2%), total soluble sugars (1.7%), and crude fibers (3%). pl had lower ash, calcium, and magnesium contents (2.7%; 8.4 and 90.7 mg/100 g db) than des (3.2%; 9.3 and 117.9 mg/100 g db) and hydes (3.9%; 23.7 and 125 mg/100 g db) (p <or= 0.05). pl and des had significantly lower peel percentages (38%) than the other subgroups (42-45%). The principal components analysis (PCA) highlights the strong relationship between some of the varietal characteristics and the consumption pattern, which is especially marked for the plantain subgroup in relation to stakeholder and the consumer preferences.