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ABSTRACT
Bananas (Musa acuminata L.) are among the most important tropical fruit crops and are staple food in most parts of the humid tropics. They are important source of income in small scale holders in rural areas. In Kenya, bananas are grown as an important food and cash crop. However its cultivation has largely remained small scaled. A common limiting factor to large scale production and expansion of existing plantations is the difficulty in obtaining high quality planting materials. Macropropagation helps in increasing banana production and is an alternative low cost method of producing banana compared to micropropagation (tissue culture). In the course of this project work 30 corms were used, 5 treatments were set up, having 3 replicates for two sample size. The treatment was a mixture of sterilized oil palm fibre and sterilized river sand as potting substrates in different proportions respectively - 100 %: 0 %, 75 %: 25%, 50 %: 50 %, 25 %: 75 %, 0 %: 100 %. The number of leaves, the number of buds, and height of buds for each treatment was recorded and results showed that 100 % oil palm fibre had the highest number of buds (2.75 ± 0.648) while 25 % oil palm fibre had the least average number of buds (1.63 ± 0.324). Also, 100 % oil palm fibre had the highest number of leaves (4.88 ± 1.470) while 25 % had the least (2.88 ± 0.790). Bud height was maximum in 50 % oil palm fibre (23.25 ± 5.216) while minimum was 100 % fibre (9.88 ± 2.767). No growth was recorded in 75 % oil palm fibre. This could be as a result of infected corms. ANOVA result for each growth parameter showed that there is a significant difference for all the 3 growth parameters at α = 0.05. Oil palm fibre had a great effect positively on the growth of bananas and should be used in growing bananas. At the end of the experiement, 100% oil palm fibre gave the highest number of buds as well as the highest number of leaves, whereas the highest height of bud was attained at 50% oil palm fibre.
