Gabe15

The other day I put in embryos of M. sikkimensis, M. nagensium, M. cheesmanii, M. 'Darjeeling Giant', M. 'Helen's Hybrid' and Ensete perrieri. I aimed for 5 of each but some of them were bad, damaged or lost during excision. I am using normal MS for the time being until the N&N ingredients come in. No germination yet, but its only been 3 days. I've had them start to grow after 2 days and take as long as 7. It seems that if they do not begin showing even small signs of growth after about 1 week then they might not be viable, this however is just based my own (few) observations.

Since almost all of these species have very thick and hard seed coats, I used the pliers on a leatherman to crack them open. It worked very except that some are so hard my hand would hurt after a while and I would have to take a break!

With enough practice I find it easy to find the embryos because they are always a different color from the endosperm, usually an off-white to slightly yellowish color and shaped like a mushroom.

Some embryos actually do well with being placed into TC media while immature. In some hybrid experiments (I know in particular with papaya), embryos would not mature properly so the seeds could not be planted. However the immature embryos could be rescued and would grow in vitro.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.