Banana is globally ranked fourth, next to rice, wheat and maize in terms of gross value of production. It is a major staple food crop for millions of people as well as provides income through local and international trade. Among the starchy staple food crops, banana ranks third with respect to the total production. Presently, banana is grown in around 150 countries across the world on an area of 4.84 million ha producing 95.6 million tons. Asia, Africa and Latin America are the major banana producing continents.Banana is a crop with dual propagation abilities, sexual through seeds and asexual through suckers. Seed propagation is common in wild species which are diploid and undergo normal meiosis, fertilization and seed set.
Natural regeneration of cultivated bananas through suckers is very slow due to hormone-mediated apical dominance of the mother plant. A plant produces only 5-20 suckers during its life time of 12-14 months. On the other hand, Micropropagation is the practice of rapidly multiplying stock plant material to produce a large number of progeny plants under aseptic conditions using modern plant tissue culture methods. Application of micropropagation in banana has the following advantages: rapid multiplication, requirement of mother stock, product uniformity, season independent products, agronomic advantages and etc. So far, we have produced an efficient and reproducible protocol for banana varieties namely Gaint Cavendish, dwarf Cavendish Poyo and Gradinin. Remarkable we could able to deliver above 55,000 plantlets to Governmental, non-governmental organizations and private inland agricultural investors and agreement is made for 1 million more.