Growth and Yield of Banana as Influenced by Age of Secondary Hardened Tissue Culture Plantlets

Abstract

Banana (Musa sp.) is one of the most important fruit crops in India. It grows all over the country in large and small scale. It is affordable by all classes of people and available throughout the year. In recent times, it has been observed, in vitro propagated banana performs better than the sucker derived plants. Moreover low rate of multiplication limits the method of propagation through suckers. Uniformity in flowering, higher yield and early harvest of tissue culture propagated plants has been demonstrated at different locations. The adoption of tissue culture propagated plants among growers has been slow mainly because of high costs. However adoption of drip irrigation and better management system resulted in enhance return from tissue cultured plants. Recently several complains were being received from banana growers regarding uneven growth, low yield and medium quality fruits of tissue cultured planting material which might be due to age of plantlets as disclosed by few studies carried till date. The hardening is a process of transferring in-vitro plants to the soil after acclimatization. During hardening the plantlets undergo physiological adaptation to International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 8 Number 04 (2019) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com