Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding. George Acquaah

prior to transfer to rooting medium.

Macropropagation has been advocated for as an effective alternative method that requires less capital and skills to produce large numbers of better‐quality banana seedlings. Macropropagation units are made from local materials (branches and woven mats) with rice hulls, coffee husks, and sawdust as substrates. Depending on variety, one corm can yield an average of 10 plantlets. This technique has the potential to narrow the gap between demand and supply of affordable healthy banana seedlings. The techniques involve harvesting banana suckers from true‐to‐type mother plants; cutting and shaping the suckers; cross‐sectional cutting of the shaped suckers to induce growth initiation; sterilization of the suckers in a household bleaching reagent for disinfection; and transferring the treated suckers to a plastic pot that is half‐filled with treated soil followed by addition of sawdust, or using only sawdust to cover the suckers (Figure B7.11). A plantain accession of Poteau Geant (ABB) was used to demonstrate the applicability of macropropagation as an alternative method of mass production of Musa species for maintenance of those with novel traits and germplasm conservation as obtained in less than three months in Figure B7.12.

Figure B7.11 Flow chart of macropropagation of plantain (Poteau Geant, ABB). (a) = uprooting or harvesting of banana sucker from true‐to‐type mother plant; (b) = shaping of sucker; (c) = cross‐section cutting of the sucker; (d) = sterilization of prepared sucker; (e) = planting of the sucker by placing on treated soil; and (f) = covering of the sucker with sawdust serving as fertilizer.

Figure B7.12 Macropropagation experimental output from a plantain accession (Poteau Geant, PG, ABB). (a) = growth rate of macropropagated PG (ABB); (b) = fully macropropagated and grown Poteau Geant ready for transfer to separate plastic pots; (c) = four independently obtained macropropagated PG from pot a; (d) = still pot a, the source of the four separate, showing more growth initiation after the transfer of the initial four plantlets.

       References

      1 Abiodun‐Solanke, A.O. and Falade, K.O. (2010). A review of the uses and methods of processing banana and plantain (Musa spp.) into storable food products. Journal of Agricultural Research and Development 9 (2): 1–82. Copy @ 2010, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ilorin.

      2 Chen, X.M., Line, R.F., and Leung, H. (1998). Genome scanning for resistance‐gene analogs in rice, barley and wheat by high‐resolution electrophoresis. Theor Appl Genet. 97: 345–355.

      3 Collard, B.C.Y. and Mackill, D.J. (2009). Start codon targeted (SCoT) polymorphism: a simple, novel DNA marker technique for generating gene targeted markers in plants. Plant Molecular Biology Reporter 27: 86–93.

      4 Dempewolf, H., Eastwood, R.J., Guarino, L. et al. (2014, 2014). Adapting agriculture to climate change: a global initiative to collect, conserve, and use crop wild relatives. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 38: 369–377.

      5 D'Hont, A., Denoeud, F., Aury, J.M. et al. (2012). The banana (Musa acuminata) genome and the evolution of monocotyledonous plants. Nature 488: 213–217. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11241.

      6 Etminan, A., Pour‐Aboughadareh, A., Mohammadi, R. et al. (2016). Applicability of start codon targeted (SCoT) and inter‐simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers for genetic diversity analysis in durum wheat genotypes. Biotechnol Biotec Eq. 30: 1075–1081.

      7 FAO (2009). Agricultural Production Status. Food and Agricultural Organisation http://www.fao.org/faostat.

      8 FAO. 2011. The World Banana Forum (WBF): Working together for sustainable banana production and trade. Introductory note. Accessed 23/2/2011. http://www.fao.org/economic/worldbananaforum.

      9 FAO. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Crop yield. http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=567#ancor. 2015.

      10 FAOStat. 2014. FAO production statistics for banana and plantain 2012. http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID¼567#ancor (accessed on 20 Mar 14).

      11 Golicz, A.A., Bayer, P.E., Barker, G.C. et al. (2016). The pangenome of an agronomically important crop plant Brassica oleracea. Nature Communications 7: 13390.

      12 Guo, D.L., Zhang, J.Y., and Liu, C.H. (2012). Genetic diversity in some grape varieties revealed by SCoT analyses. Molecular Biology Reports 39: 5307–5313.

      13 Hajibarat, Z., Saidi, A., Hajibarat, Z., and Talebi, R. (2015). Characterization of genetic diversity in chickpea using SSR markers, start codon targeted polymorphism (SCoT) and conserved DNA‐derived polymorphism (CDDP). Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants 21 (3): 365–373.

      14 Hamidi, H., Talebi, R., and Keshavarz, F. (2014). Comparative efficiency of functional gene‐based markers, start codon targeted polymorphism (SCoT) and conserved DNA derived polymorphism (CDDP) with ISSR markers for diagnostic fingerprinting in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Cereal Research Communications 44 (4): 558–567.

      15  IBA (International Banana Association) 2007 Banana facts: nutrition. Accessed 18/04/2007. http://www.eatmorebananas.com/facts/nutrition.html.

      16 Igwe, D.O., Afiukwa, C.A., Ubi, B.E. et al. (2017). Assessment of genetic diversity in Vigna unguiculata L. (Walp) accessions using inter‐simple sequence repeat (ISSR) and start codon targeted (SCoT) polymorphic markers. BMC Genetics 18: 98.

      17 INIBAP (2003) International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain of Banana‐Food and wealth, www.inibap.org.

      18 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, IITA (2018). https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=IITA+banana&fr=tightropetb&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.iita.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F06%2Fslider5-1080x607.jpg#id=429&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iita.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F04%2Fbanana-and-plantain.jpg&action=click

      19 Jiang, L. and Zang, D. (2018). Analysis of genetic relationships in Rosa rugosa using conserved DNA‐derived polymorphism markers. Biotechnology and Biotechnological Equipment 32 (1): 88–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/13102818.2017.1407255.

      20 Karamura, E., Frison, E., Karamura, D.A.,