Enhancement of tissue culture plantlets with proper shading at pre-nursery stage

Banana is vulnerable to a number of biotic and abiotic stresses which limit its production, particularly among small and marginal farmers with limited resources. Tissue culture is now a standard practice in banana propagation.
Banana plantlets obtained by micro-propagation need to be submitted to a period of acclimatization since they do not use light, water, and nutrients in an efficient way. The acclimatization must be carried out under greenhouse
conditions where temperature, light, and air humidity are adequate for a gradual hardening of the plantlets. In this study, the development of banana plantlets was evaluated during acclimatization under a full light condition covered surfaces with shading at 140 cm, 110 cm, 80 cm and 50 cm height. Besides that, this study also covered the development of banana plantlets under a few shading layer which are two layers on the top, one layer on the top and one at the side and two layers on the top and two at the side. The variables that had been set up for this experiment were leaf number, leaf area, plant height, and pseudo stem girth. Data had been taken 2 days
interval for 4 weeks for both experiments which are shading height treatments and shading layer treatments. Treatments were hierarchically graded according to their statistic classification. The results from first treatment
indicated that 50 cm shading height could give the better nursery management by thinking about the possibility of space saving nursery practice such as vertical nursery. From that, the second experiment came out with the fixed height of shading which is 50 cm for all the treatments of shading layer experiment.