Amah during her contract review seminar |
The IITA Regional Banana Breeding Manager, Delphine Amah,
who supervised execution of the crosses in IITA-Ibadan, said the crosses were
vital for plantain improvement in West Africa in the years ahead.
Delivering her contract review seminar titled: Support to
Banana and Plantain Breeding―Updates on West Africa, Amah said the Banana Unit
had recorded giant strides in the recent years.
For instance, as part of a revised pre-breeding strategy to
produce improved parents while shortening the breeding cycle for plantain, the
unit was now producing tetraploids which have four sets of chromosomes from
diploids (which have two) using optimized in vitro doubling techniques.
In addition, tissue culture techniques have been employed
to generate seedlings from crosses through embryo culture and mass propagation
of plants for clonal evaluation.
The unit is also promoting the use of macropropagation and
field propagation techniques for the production of clean planting material and
good agronomy practices.
So far, Amah and her team have produced and distributed
thousands of Agbagba plantain plantlets to the IITA farm unit and Youth
Agripreneur project for propagation and distribution.
Furthermore, they have established pollination blocks with
female fertile plantain landraces and Black Sigatoka resistant
tetraploid plantain hybrids for accelerated breeding.
The team has established recently imported Musa
acuminata ssp. banksii accessions for evaluation and use as parents
in crosses to breed for plantains with high provitamin A content.
They have also established a propagation scheme for the
production of plantlets for pollination blocks and planned trials to enable
registration of new IITA hybrids.
All these activities are aimed at rejuvenating plantain
breeding in IITA for efficient delivery of improved varieties to farmers, she
said.
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