CHEAPER WATER SOURCES FOR MICROPROPAGATION OF BANANA (MUSA ACUMINATE 'GRANDE NAINE')

Abstract

High cost of production is one of the limiting factors for large scale adoption of the technique for commercial production. Reducing the cost factor necessarily mean low investment and that could encourage low income entrepreneurs to take up tissue culture activity as a business venture. Thus this activity could spread to towns and taluks. Banana is one crop which commands a phenomenally high demand in India. Water source in production laboratories is from distillation units. The costs of these units are a high regular maintenance is also economically taxing. Hence to reduce the cost of production of tissue-cultured banana, in vitro multiplication and rooting was carried out on a medium prepared with five different sources of water viz., filtered water (millipore), filtered water (aquaguard), double distilled water, single distilled water, autoclaved potable tap water. Cultures grown on MS medium prepared with filtered (aquaguard) water recorded maximum mean number of shoots/culture (12.50), highest mean shoot length (2.77 cm) and maximum mean number of adventitious buds/culture (8.25) followed by and millipore filtered water and autoclaved potable tap water. Microshoots cultured on MS medium prepared with aquaguard filtered water recorded highest rooting percentage (100%), maximum number of primary roots/shoots (9.50) and highest root length (7.00 cm) followed by filtered water (millipore). These results have clearly demonstrated that a cheaper source of water such as filtered (aquaguard) or even autoclaved potable tap water can be used as low cost alternative water sources for successful micropropagation of banana 'Grande Naine'.