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Originally Posted by damaclese
Gabe Scot and i are looking for a Banana called Mysor its appears to be vary drought and heat tolerant if we got one do you think any one on the org would be interested in Tc of them?
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Mysore is a very common banana, it shouldnʻt be too hard to find. Going Bananas has them. Other common names for it is Pisang Ceylon and Misi Luki, different accessions may vary slightly but they are all the same basic cultivar. If theres that much interest in it, I could look into TCʻn it later on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chironex
I am not an expert yet, but this contradicts what I have read. The clone produced through micropropagation is an identical copy of the parent (as are all other plantlets multiplied from the same explant.) The only possible way that this can be deviated is through contamination or mutagens deliberately applied to the culture.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard
I have heard from other Musa (fruiting) growers and read a few articles indicating that Tc of Musa usually produces a new cultivar of the plant and less often a plant that is completely true to form of the parent. What are your experiences with this?
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This is not true, though there is some truth in it. Bananas can and do indeed mutate during micropropagation, however precautions can be taken to lower the rate of mutation. In the field, bananas mutate naturally, this is the reason we have so many cultivars and different varieties in the same groups. In micropropagation, you are generally dealing with many plants at a time (I produce about 300-400 explants in 3hrs, you can see it adds up), and forcing them to grow and proliferate rather quickly. Usually, in a very small number of your explants, there is some mutation. To reduce this, in our lab, we will only subculture a plant 5 times after initiation (this results in about 4,000 explants per original plant). If we run out of explants for that variety, and have tissue subcultured all of the lines 5 times, we will then go collect a new plant from the field, preferably one that was not grown from tissue culture or if not available, has been in the ground for at least 2 years. If a lab continues to reuse the same material over and over, eventually the mutation rate would be unreasonably high and you will see many "off-types". Some mutations can be beneficial (such as dwarfing or increased yield), but most often they are not. Even with these precautions, from time to time a farmer will find an off-type in their field, but tissue culture still has many advantages over traditional propagation.