Influence of Gelling Agents in Micropropagation of Banana var. Grand Naine

A b s t r a c t K e y w o r d s This study was aimed to examine the effects of different kinds of gelling agents in micropropagation of banana, Musa paradisiaca var. Grand Naine. Four types of gelling agents namely Agar agar (Himedia), Crude agar (NR Chem), CleriGel (Himedia) and Gelwell (Microxpress) were used as supporting matrices and the performance of the banana cultures was assessed. There were significant differences in terms of shoot length, number of leaves and number of shoots produced per culture among the supporting media used. Best results were obtained with Gelwell with 5.75 shoots per culture, while media containing Agar agar, Crude agar and CleriGel resulted in 5.12, 4.58 and 4.37 shoots per culture respectively. The plantlet length (9.7 cm) was the highest in Gelwell followed by Crude agar (7.9 cm), Agar agar (6.8 cm) and CleriGel (5.8 cm).