Potential of improved banana cultivars as a food security and income generating crop: preliminary results on adoption of the cultivars

Abstract

The East African Highland banana, an important stable food in Uganda, is susceptible to weevils, black Sigatoka and nematodes. Host plant resistance has been identified as the most appropriate solution to these problems and selection of resistant clones from introduced germplasm adopted as one of the means of developing the intervention. Eleven promising clones selected from foreign introductions were evaluated in 13 districts of Central Eastern and North Eastern Uganda. The farming communities evaluated the clones for cooking, roasting, juice extraction and dessert qualities. Five of the clones were selected on the basis of bunch size and use. They noted that although the new bananas were not as good in taste as the East African Highland banana they were as good as other starchy foods in their areas. The introduced bananas were acclaimed for the advantages of being higher yielding than all the food crops known to the farming communities. The selected clones are currently diffusing fast in the areas. This paper describes the progress to date on promotion and diffusion of the selected clones.