Micropropagation of Banana

Micropropagation is the industrial-scale application of tissue culture to multiply plants that are genetically identical to a single parent, and it is used at commercial scale to maintain high standards of genetic and physical uniformity in crops such as banana, pineapple, strawberry and potato. The banana (Musa sp.) protocol illustrated in Figure 5.11 is a representative example of the whole approach: healthy suckers are first surface-sterilized (with sodium hypochlorite), after which their apical meristems are isolated and cultured on MS basal medium supplemented with plant growth regulators - including cytokinins such as Benzylaminopurine (BAP) and Kinetin for shoot induction, and auxins such as Indole Acetic Acid (IAA) and Naphthalene Acetic Acid (NAA) for subsequent root induction. Multiple shoots are induced within a defined period, the resulting plantlets are acclimatized in a poly-house under shade, tested for genetic uniformity to confirm they are true clones of the parent, and only then transferred to the field. Because a single explant can, in principle, be multiplied in …