Banana imrovement with cellular and molecular biology, and induced mutations: Future and perspectives

Banana and plantains are important fruit crops in tropical and subtropical countries, and provide employment, nutrition, and food security. Tremendous progress has been made in the genetic improvement of Musa in recent years, and new varieties are now becoming available from breeding programmes. There is still further scope for improvement of banana against disease resistance, abiotic resistance, and other agronomical traits. Since breeding is time-consuming, induced mutations and biotechnology would be an ideal approach to improve banana and plantains in an environmentally friendly way. International collaboration is very much needed for germplasm exchange, e.g. the Global Programme for Musa Improvement (PROMUSA). It is a broadly based programme and was developed as a means to link the work carried out to address the problems of export banana producers., with those initiatives directed towards improving banana and plantain production at the subsistence and smallholder level. There are several working groups of PROMUSA for banana genetic improvement under two major programmes: (a) genetic improvement and (b) pest and disease research. It is highly desirable that the farmers accept newly developed banana varieties and minimise the use of chemical pesticides. In the future, banana research will need more attention for the improvement of nutrition, genomics, genetic mapping, low cost micropropagation, and somatic embryogenesis.