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November 19, 2009 10:23 AM
Tissue Culture Helps To Generate Banana Saplings
By Mohamad Bakri Darus
MELAKA, Nov 19(Bernama) -- The tissue culture technique to generate banana saplings is seen as the solution in helping farmers to grow bananas on commercial scale.
Hitherto, the lack of banana saplings in large numbers especially the ones that produce high yield and highly resistant to diseases prevented farmers from taking up large scale farming.
However, in helping out the farmers Melaka Biotechnology Corporation, through its subsidiary Invitrotech Sdn Bhd has adopted the tissue culture method with encouraging results.
The company, established in 2005 started commercialising its saplings produced through tissue culture in 2007. The tissue culture is carried out at its lab in MIEL Industrial Area, Masjid Tanah, and so far has produced more than 300,000 banana saplings.
The banana varities produced using this method are the Berangan, Tanduk, Cavendish, Rastali and Nipah.
THE ADVANTAGES OF TISSUE CULTURE
The company's managing director Sukri Ibrahim told Bernama that apart from banana saplings the company also produced other commercial plants of high demand, for example herbs.
He listed the many advantages of using the tissue culture method to propogate plants.
- It can produce plants in big quantities that are healthy, free from diseases and uniform in their shape and output.
- The herbs bred in-vitro have little variation in their "secondary metabolites" content compared when it reproduces naturally.
- Suitable for plants that doesn't easily propagate and those in the verge of extinction.
- The plant tissue used (explant) is free from pathogen and is stored in-vitro, enabling safe exchange of plant genetic material between nations.
THE TISSUE CULTURE PROCESS
Sukri notes that the first step in tissue culture is to identify the parent plant and harvest the tissue from certain parts of the plant. The harvested part must be sterelized before it is ready for cloning.
The harvested tissue is then placed on a jelly like medium that has the specific nutrients and hormones to ensure it germinates well in big numbers.
Through this medium, the plant source will germinate and the germinating parts will be sliced into small pieces and transferred into another medium to stimulate the growth of the roots, he says.
When the roots are out, the saplings will be shifted into small pots and placed in an enclosure where the tempeature is maintained at 25 degress celcius, the same temperature at the tissue culture lab, to ensure they adopt well to the environment when they are shifted to the ground.
Only the sturdy saplings will be transferred to the fields and the whole process may take four to six months.
Sukri says saplings planted in a polybag with the stem size ranging from 10 to 12 inches with full grown leaves are then sold to customers.
"From a single plant source, we can generate up to 2,000 saplings that are exactly the same as the original plant, that is why it is of utmost importance to choose the right parent plant," he said.
HIGH DEMAND
As for herbs, Sukri revealed that the process remains the same with the only difference being the part chosen as plant source depends on the chosen tissue culture protocol, for example the Misai Kucing (Orthosiphon stamineus) can be propogated through the cross section of the stem.
Sukri states that the current production capacity of his company is between 70,000 and 80,000 saplings per month and by January 2010 onwards the production capacity will be increased to betweeen 100,000 and 150,000 saplings per month.
"And from the middle of next year the output is expected to increase between 200,000 and 250,000 per month. At present the lab has the capability to produce 300,000 saplings per month," he said.
He notes that the saplings produced by his company is in high demand not only in Melaka but also in other states including as far as Kelantan.
Meanwhile, the Melaka State Farmer's Organisation Chairman Datuk Abu Pit admits that the tissue culture technique has helped the farmers to procure banana saplings in big numbers.
Based on his observation at the two-hectare banana plantation owned by the Merlimau Area Farmers' Organisation (PPK), the saplings provided by Invitrotech Sdn Bhd is capable of providing good yield.
The PPK also owns two four-hectare plantations each in Kampung Tasik and Paya Buluh near here, with the varities planted being Berangan, Tanduk, Lang, Nipah and Kapas.
-- BERNAMA
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