Role of healthy-looking banana and alternate hosts in the spread of banana bunchy top disease

Poster presented at Symposium of the Pest Management Council of the Philippines. 200

Catalogue of introduced and local banana cultivars in the Philippines: Results of a demonstration trial by the Institute of Plant Breeding, University of the Philippines, Los Baños

This catalogue provides information on the morphological and yield characteristics of 19 introduced and 8 local banana cultivars grown at the IPB-UPLB demonstration plot. It is intended to serve as a guide to help in identifying and selecting cultivars for further evaluation by researchers and planting by interested growers

Farmer's handbook on introduced and local banana cultivars in the Philippines

This manual provides information on the morphological and agronomic traits, fruit characteristics, reactions to common diseases, and uses of 21 introduced and 8 local cultivars based on field trials carried out through the Bioversity-DA-BAR-NRMDC programme. It is intended to serve as a useful guide in the identification and selection of cultivars for further evaluation by researchers and planting by interested banana growers

Gibberellic acid detection of dwarf offtypes in micropropagated Cavendish bananas

Detection of dwarf offtypes produced by micropropagation of Cavendish bananas (Musa spp.) cultivars New Guinea Cavendish and Williams was achieved by spraying gibberellic acid (GA(3)) solution (289 mu mol/L) onto deflasked plants and measuring various plantlet responses. The most useful identification criterion was elongation of the sheath of the first leaf to form after GA(3) application. Elongation of this structure was about 2-fold greater in normal plants than observed in dwarfs. Similar measurements taken earlier during in vitro culture or later during plant establishment in soil were not as useful in discriminating between normals and dwarfs as the measurements made at deflasking. The similar GA(3)-induced elongation response of the dwarf offtype and that of the naturally occurring dwarf cultivar Dwarf Parfitt suggests that the mechanism for dwarfism could be the same in the 2 cases