Abstract

Commercial cultivation of banana very often faces the problems of pests and diseases and scarcity of quality planting materials. Production of disease free planting material by tissue culture method requires high capital investment and skill and, therefore, is not readily practicable at farm level. Whereas mass multiplication of banana through macro-propagation is a farmer's friendly method for disease free planting material generation at field level. The complete process of macro-propagation takes 5–7 months (including a hardening period of 45 days) for production of suckers ready for planting. The length of this period varies with the prevailing temperature at the time of planting of the corms for propagation and it is also necessary to produce the suckers as per the proper time of planting in the particular region. Planting the decapitated and decorticated corms, weighing 1–1.5 kg, in the month of October, taking sawdust containing Bacillus subtilis as initiation media and treating the corms with 40 ppm BAP results in production of 25–27 numbers of uniform tertiary suckers that are ready for field planting by the month of March-April, which is the recommended planting time for the state of Assam.