Abstract:
Banana is an essential staple crop throughout the Great Lakes region of East Africa. It is also an
important source of trade and income. To safeguard sustainable banana production and generate
wealth for smallholder farmers, high quality planting material is crucial.
Banana in smallholder farmer systems in East Africa is traditionally propagated by means of suckers,
which contain pests and diseases. Plants produced through tissue culture are mostly free from pests
and diseases (with a few exceptions). There are many further benefits to using tissue culture plants:
(1) they are more vigorous, meaning faster growth and higher yields; (2) they are more uniform,
allowing for better planned marketing; and (3) they can be produced in large quantities in a short
period of time, facilitating distribution of both existing and new cultivars. In other words, tissue
culture technology can help banana farmers to make the transition from subsistence to income
generation.