Novel nursery technique for multiple propagation of musa acuminata cv. berangan planting material using water sucker

A study was conducted at Universiti Malaysia Kelantan during April 2013 to August 2013 to develop a novel nursery technique for mass propagation of banana planting materials by using water suckers. The cultivar used in this experiment is Musa acuminata cv. Berangan or known as Pisang Berangan to local people. The objectives of this study was to explore the ability of water sucker of M. acuminate cv. Berangan for producing equivalent quality of planting materials and to provide alternative nursery technique to mass propagate quality planting materials by using water suckers. In the experiment, the rhizomes of water suckers are used. The complete rhizomes are set as control treatment. The rhizome that been sectioned into 2 parts and 4 parts are set as treatment 1 and treatment 2 respectively. The rhizomes of all treatments were sown in the sowing tray and remained in the sowing tray for 4 weeks. Then, the seedlings were transferred into the polybag. The height of pseudo-stem, girth of pseudo-stem, the leaves number, the length and width of leaves and length of roots were observed for 9 weeks in this study. From the result obtained from the analysis of variance, the pseudo-stem height show more significant differences compare to other parameters. The pseudo-stem height and pseudo-stem girth are the physical traits that most affected by the sectioned rhizomes technique. The complete rhizome (control treatment) recorded the fastest growth rate after 9 weeks. The growth of rhizomes that sectioned into 2 parts (treatment 2) show a slightly slower growth than control treatment but it was constant. Thus, sectioning mother rhizomes can be adopted to multiple propagate equivalent quality planting materials. However, further research has to be conducted in enhancing growth in the nursery stages.