The Effect of Bud Splitting on Suppression of Apical Dominance and Inducing Multiple Buds Development in Banana Shoot Tip Cultures of cv. ‘Yangambi’ (AAA) in Tanzania

Aims: The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of bud splitting technique on suppression of apical dominance and induction of multiple buds development in banana shoot tips of cv. Yangambi.
Study Design: The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design, with three treatments each replicated ten times.
Place and Duration of Study: The samples (explants sources) were collected from research farm at Chambezi near Bagamoyo Tanzania. The research was conducted at Mikocheni Agricultural Research laboratories at Dar es salaam. The duration of the study was three months.
Methodology: The buds containing the shoot tips were cut and longitudinally split into halves and quarter fourteen days after culture initiation. MS media supplemented with 5mg/l of BAP was used in buds proliferation stage.
Results: The results indicated that there was significant (p≤0.001) difference in number of shoots produced in each bud splitting technique; where by highest number of shoots were observed in quarter split buds (8.37±1.48) shoots per bud. Significant (p≤0.001) increase in fresh weight was also observed in quarter split buds (12.02±2.25) grams compared with the control.
Conclusion: Due to increased demand of banana planting material and increased costs of tissue culture materials and reagents, application of bud splitting technique stands a better chance of promoting buds proliferation and cut on the costs of sub culturing and time. This technique also minimizes physiological barriers that might require additional media formulations and the rate of somaclonal variation which results from continuous sub culturing.