Willow87

I was wondering what is the history of M. Little Prince. How was it developed?

Gabe15

It is is tissue culture sport from 'Dwarf Cavendish'. If you search online enough, you can find the patent for it regarding it's origin.

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

Kevin

Remind me again what a 'tissue culture sport' is. I always thought that tissue culture indicated the plants are genetically identical to the parent. Are 'sports' mutations that happen during the cloning process?

Sorry to go off topic here, but it's just a quick question, hopefully.

Willow87

Thanks Gabe, I have had mine for a couple of years now. For some reason none of the pups survive. It has about 4 pups on it now but they get a certain height and then shrivel up

Gabe15

A sport means it is a mutation. In theory, all of the plants which come out of tissue culture should be uniform and identical, but often there are somatic mutations and so "sports" or "offtypes" can be quite common sometimes. There are steps that can be taken to lower the rate of offtypes, but they pretty much always show up in small amounts, especially when producing a large quantity of plants.


Here is a link to the patent.
Musa plant named ‘Little Prince’ - US Patent PP15255 Description

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