Field Performance of False Horn Plantain (&lt;i&gt;Musa&lt;/i&gt; AAB) Corms Treated Mechanically and with Hormone Solutions

John Opata,Raphael Kwame Bam,Solomon Kodjo Darkey,Enoch Opoku,Jens-Norbert Wünsche,Beloved Mensah Dzomeku

doi:10.18052/www.scipress.com/jhpr.13.1

Field Performance of False Horn Plantain (<i>Musa</i> AAB) Corms Treated Mechanically and with Hormone Solutions

John Opata, Raphael Kwame Bam + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/jhpr.13.1

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Abstract

The growth and yield performance of macropropagated plantlets of the False Horn plantain cultivar ‘Apantu’ was evaluated due to the lack of reliable data on the effectiveness of that planting material under typical farming conditions in West Africa, Ghana. Corms were either mechanically treated by the Plants Issus de Fragments de tige (PIF) technique to destroy the apical meristem or remained intact as untreated controls. Subsequently, PIF-treated corms were vacuum infiltrated with either natural or synthetic plant hormone solutions. Emerging plantlets were harvested, acclimatized for three months and planted in a freshly prepared field. Vegetative growth characteristics of each mother (main) plant were taken at 6 and 9 months after planting and for the main and first sucker crop along with yield parameters at harvest, respectively. The results indicated that treatment induced growth differences at 6 and 9 months after planting and were no longer significant at harvest. Consequently, final growth performance was quite homogenous across all treatments for the main and sucker crop, respectively. In contrast, fruit yield parameters of the main and sucker crops were to some extent affected by treatment; however, hormone infiltration tended to have little additional effect over the PIF-treatment. Nevertheless, treating corms with hormonal solutions enhanced the production of rooted plantlets at the nursery stage and ensured improved field performance.

Highlights

Plantain (Musa AAB) is an important food crop that is widely grown in the humid tropics of Africa, providing food for more than 70 million people in that region [1]
The timing of flowering after planting was not affected by the treatments and occurred between 13 and 15 months for the main crop and about 24 months for the sucker crop
At 9 months after planting, the highest pseudostems with about 158 cm were found by corms treated with SW and CWf, which were about 11% longer than those of corms treated with BAP and the Plants Issus de Fragments de tige (PIF)-technique (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Plantain (Musa AAB) is an important food crop that is widely grown in the humid tropics of Africa, providing food for more than 70 million people in that region [1]. The majority of plantain production comes from rural families’ backyard gardens as well as cultivated fields of smallholders and is an essential income source for resource poor farmers in developing countries [1], [2]. Access to sufficient and inexpensive planting material by smallholder plantain farmers is a major constraint in Sub-Saharan Africa [5], [7], [8]. This is as a result of several factors, including low sucker production due to the apical dominance behaviour of the main pseudostem [1], [9], [10] and poor field management by smallholder farmers [11], [12]. Farmers often rely on young suckers or old corms directly from the field for the establishment of new plantings; this plant material is frequently infested with pathogens or various pests [8]

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