Growth enhancement of tissue culture plantlets at poly-bag nursery stage

Banana is a major fruit crop in the tropical and subtropical region of the world making it one of the hugely commercialized and demanded crops. Although there are technologies being applied and utilized to increase the production of banana crop such as the application of tissue culture technology that effectively multiply banana, the production of the crop remains under supplied due to the ever increasing demand. Therefore, there is a need to keep up with the increasing demand of the fruit crop. One of the ways is by shortening the nursery period of the tissue cultured banana plantlets. Hence, the objective of this study is to shorten the nursery period by applying fertilizer treatment during the nursery period (acclimatization) to enhance the growth rate of plantlets. The fertilizer treatments included HI-NK™, HI-PK™ and WONDERFUL™ which commercial fertilizer products of varying nutrient formulations supplied by Agricultural Chemicals (M) Sdn. Bhd. The results indicated that vegetative growth parameters (stem height, girth circumference, number of functional leaves and leaf area) of treated plantlets were significantly improved compared to the control treatment. The fertilizer treatment particularly HlNK™ which is higher in nitrogen ratio proved to have a great influence in terms of vegetative growth parameters in the study. Hence, fertilizers with higher ratio of nitrogen, N especially foliar type is effective in enhancing the growth rate of plantlets thus, shortening the nursery period.