Banana Cultivation and Micropropagation in India: Addressing Challenges and Exploring Future Prospects

ABSTRACT: India is a major leading global producer of bananas and plantains, which is an essential staple source of food to fulfill the carbohydrates and micronutrients requirement. Successive increased productivity and significantly expanded cultivation areas are driven by awareness of their nutritional value, economic potential, and serving export opportunities. Tissue culture has become crucial in meeting the high demand for quality planting material, with private companies playing a key role in crop improvement. However, challenges persist, including farmer reluctance to adopt tissue-cultured plantlets and concerns over genetic fidelity, quality, and disease resistance. The industry's underdevelopment in certain regions further exacerbates the gap, with over 2000 million plantlets needed annually. Addressing this requires strategic marketing policies to reduce post-hardening losses and ensure timely availability of certified plantlets. Additionally, tissue culture techniques like micropropagation offer solutions to microbial pathogen threats, enhancing banana cultivation with increase in yield production. Therefore, economic losses face by farmers can be easily addressed by incorporating tissue culture approaches such as micropropagation. In the present study, authors collected the data from various stockholders and companies to understand the challenges, production and demands to meet the population in the current year. This study highlights the need for collaboration between industry stakeholders and farmers to improve production and ensure a sustainable banana supply.