Government Information Service

June 24, 2003

The Ministry of Agriculture has embarked... on an expansion programme for bananas in response to the growing demand for the fruit on both local and foreign markets.

In order to meet the increasing demand, the Marketing and National Importing Board (MNIB) plans to increase sales from 800,000 to 3 million pounds annually. In terms of acreage, this means an increase of approximately 200 acres. Given that commercial bananas are planted at the rate of 700 plants per acre, this means that 105,000 tissue cultured plantlets will be needed over the next two years to satisfy the increased acreage. This also means that for this year 60,000 plantlets will be needed. In light of this, the Ministry of Agriculture is sourcing cultured planting material from suppliers in South Africa.

According to Minister of Agriculture Claris Charles: “The Ministry of Agriculture believes it has a responsibility to assist our farmers to benefit from new opportunities.”

A recent survey carried out among banana farmers revealed that one of the main limiting factors to increased production is a lack of clean, healthy planting materials. Farmers are reluctant to use traditional planting material (suckers and bull heads), as this is a known means of spreading moko disease.