Macropropagation in Banana: Response to Hormone and Genome in Sucker Production

Banana (Musa spp.) is the most important fruit crop of the world. The production of banana propagules for different scales of its cultivation by local farmers is still an important researchable issue as micropropagation is the only available source for plantlets production. An experiment on macro-propagation of banana belonging to three different genomic groups (AAA, AAB, ABB) was conducted at the Department of Plant Physiology, BCKV Mohanpur, West Bengal to study the induction of sucker through application of BAP @40 ppm. The substrate used for planting the corms were a mixture of sawdust + Trichoderma @ 15 g kg-1 of sawdust + vermicompost @ 15 g kg-1 of sawdust. Observations recorded were weight of the corm, days to appearance of the first primary suckers, number of primary suckers, number of secondary suckers, number of tertiary suckers and total number of suckers. The number of primary suckers induced ranged between 1.67 in Dwarf Cavendish (AAA) to 5.33 in Lacaton (AAA), while the number of secondary suckers induced ranged between 0.67 in Srimanti (AAA) to 22.00 in Manohar (AAB). The number of tertiary suckers induced were only observed in the genomic composition AAB with 4.00 and 0.67 in both the genotypes Madhurangbale and Manohar respectively. Days to bud appearance varies from 7.33 in Madhurangbale (AAA) to 29.33 days in Basrai (AAA). The weight of the corm also varied from 5.56 kg in Madhurangbale (AAA) and 2.06 kg in Kothia (ABB).