clean Planting Materials and Management Practices for Sustained Production of Banana and Plantain in Africa

摘要

The majority of banana and plantain farmers in Africa grow their crop on small backyard plots with a few hundred plants (Swennen, 1990), Traditional cultivars are often grown perennially whereby successive crops are derived from shoots (suckers) emerging from lateral buds located at the base of the main plant in the previous crop. In most plantain cultivars, the emergence of new suckers follows a hierarchical pattern due to a strong apical dominance exerted by the main plant (De Langhe et al., 1983,Swennen and Wilson, 1983; Swennen et al., 1984). In contrast, wild bananas or non-plantain cultivars have a polyarchic architecture that produces relatively large numbers of shoots (daughter plants) from the base of the mother plant.