Articles
ENHANCING BANANA CROP MANAGEMENT BY USE OF TISSUE-CULTURE DERIVED PLANTING MATERIAL IN KENYA
Article number
897_62
Pages
459 – 462
Language
English
Abstract
Banana is a popular food crop in Kenya.
Around 2 million tonnes are produced annually from about 80,000 ha.
However, production has been declining in recent years, mainly due to diseases and pests.
Farmers traditionally use suckers from their old orchards or from their neighbours fields for replanting.
These materials are often infected by pathogens, particularly Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense, weevils and nematodes.
This practice has led to the spread of diseases and pests to many production areas, eventually leading to declining productivity.
In 1997, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute started distributing tissue-cultured banana plantlets to farmers groups.
A participatory evaluation approach was used for farmers to compare the performance of their traditional materials and tissue-cultured materials.
Key consideration was the economic benefits of using tissue-culture materials as a way of disease management and increasing productivity.
The project initially worked with eight groups of 500 farmers in Eastern and Central Provinces of Kenya.
The number of groups later increased to 17 with a total of 966 members.
Farmers were trained on all aspects of tissue-culture production using the farmer field school approach.
By 2001, about 2500 farmers were growing about 107,600 tissue-cultured banana plants.
By adopting the tissue-culture technology, the yield increased from less than 10 t/ha to about 30 t/ha.
Tissue-cultured materials were free of diseases and pests for a longer time than the traditional suckers.
It was also found that, although tissue-cultured materials were more expensive than the traditional suckers, the extra cost was more than offset by the increased yield, resulting in a 145% increase in income for farmers.
It can therefore be concluded that tissue-culture technology has great potential for the management of diseases and pests in bananas in an integrated approach system.
Around 2 million tonnes are produced annually from about 80,000 ha.
However, production has been declining in recent years, mainly due to diseases and pests.
Farmers traditionally use suckers from their old orchards or from their neighbours fields for replanting.
These materials are often infected by pathogens, particularly Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense, weevils and nematodes.
This practice has led to the spread of diseases and pests to many production areas, eventually leading to declining productivity.
In 1997, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute started distributing tissue-cultured banana plantlets to farmers groups.
A participatory evaluation approach was used for farmers to compare the performance of their traditional materials and tissue-cultured materials.
Key consideration was the economic benefits of using tissue-culture materials as a way of disease management and increasing productivity.
The project initially worked with eight groups of 500 farmers in Eastern and Central Provinces of Kenya.
The number of groups later increased to 17 with a total of 966 members.
Farmers were trained on all aspects of tissue-culture production using the farmer field school approach.
By 2001, about 2500 farmers were growing about 107,600 tissue-cultured banana plants.
By adopting the tissue-culture technology, the yield increased from less than 10 t/ha to about 30 t/ha.
Tissue-cultured materials were free of diseases and pests for a longer time than the traditional suckers.
It was also found that, although tissue-cultured materials were more expensive than the traditional suckers, the extra cost was more than offset by the increased yield, resulting in a 145% increase in income for farmers.
It can therefore be concluded that tissue-culture technology has great potential for the management of diseases and pests in bananas in an integrated approach system.
Publication
Authors
J. Njuguna, S. Nguthi, F. Wambugu, D. Gitau, M. Karuoya
Keywords
farmers field schools (FFS), income, yield
Online Articles (73)