ABSTRACTS

Banana and plantains (Musa spp.) are the staple food for over 20 million people in the Great Lakes region of central and eastern Africa (Karamura et al., 1998). One of the major constraints to the production or banana and plantain is the unavailability of healthy planting materials. This could be revolved using in vivo macro propagation. The objective of the study   was to evaluate the effect of different initiation media on in vivo macro propagation of two cultivars of Musa spp through bud manipulation techniques. The study was conducted at the Horticultural unit of the Teaching and Research Farm of the Department of Crop science, Faculty of Agricultural, University of Benin, Benin city, Nigeria. The experiment was a 5 x 2 factorial laid out in a completely randomized design (CRD) with two replications.

The initiation  media included Sawdust (SD), Rice husk (RH), Plantain leaves (PLV), Sawdust + Rice husk (SD + RH), Sawdust + Plantain leaves (SD + PLV) while two Musa cultivars (Pita 14 and CRBP 39) were used. Sword sucker of each cultivar were cleaned, trimmed, treated and planted. Results showed that there was no significant difference i.e there was no significant difference between the potting media and data parameters. However Sawdust initiation media had the highest number of plantlet (5.33),  Sawdust and plantain leaves initiation media (5.00) can be used as substitute for sawdust.