Banana tissue culture technology are means of producing a thousand plantlets in 6 – 8 months that are pest and disease free, uniform, more vigorous, easily transportable and marketable.
However potted tissue plantlets are more fragile than suckers and need special care such as provision of nutrients and regular watering in dry climatic conditions.
Propagation steps
Select healthy suckers, clean them by pairing and sterilize in the laboratory.
Multiply the cleaned sterilised shoot on media into small pieces for multiple shoot production, this takes 4 months.
Allow the plant on media for 4 months for development of roots.
Harden, wean and pot the plantlets in sterilised fertile soil then put them in a humidity chamber for 3 – 4 weeks.
After plant the plantlets in holes of 60cm wide by 60cm deep and provide special care by applying fertilizers and watering.
Lastly index for virus certification by requesting the virus indexing report to avoid diseased planting materials.
