PR-Giants

I have a lightly variegated non dwarf Pisang Awak mother plant that has several pups and one of the pups is a nicely variegated sword. I'd like to quickly propagate this nicely variegated pup without damaging it and also I'd like the new pups that are produced to grow extremely quickly. Any lightly variegated or non variegated plants in this grouping have no significant value and can be killed or removed if necessary.

What's the best propagation method for this situation?

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Jeff zone 8 N.C.

I assume it would be an in ground plant. I do not know if this would be the best way but it is the one I have used successfully before. I would cut off the mother plant near soil level and then kill the mothers growth point by cutting it out, leaving as much intact corm as possible. Then I would remove the undesirable pups completely from the mother corm. That would allow the preferred pup to feed off the mothers corm reserves. I have done it another way by just cutting the undesirable pups off above ground and then keeping any of their replacement growth cut off.

PR-Giants

It is.


Yeah, making that nicely variegated pup the dominate pup was the first thing I did.

Usually when starting with a slightly variegated mother plant getting one nicely variegated pup is rare and getting two would be very rare.

Good choice. Let Gen 1 power Gen 2.


After removing the undesirable pups I partitioned the variegated pup from the mother plant and raised the soil level for the pup by 8 inches.

Anyone that's grown on an incline has noticed that pups on the uphill side have a higher growing point than the pups on the downhill side. The partition is an easy way to replicate that.

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Jeff zone 8 N.C.

"After removing the undesirable pups I partitioned the variegated pup from the mother plant and raised the soil level for the pup by 8 inches." ............"The partition is an easy way to replicate that."

What do you mean by "partitioned"? Could you elaborate on how to replicate.

"Anyone that's grown on an incline has noticed that pups on the uphill side have a higher growing point than the pups on the downhill side."

I did not know that as my land is completely flat, except for a small slope on the back end, which I maintain as a buffer. It only varies 1 foot over 9 acres of my 10 at 32 and 33 feet above sea level. Very interesting knowledge you are providing here!

PR-Giants

I'm basically doing this how you posted except with a slight variation.

Letting the Gen 1 Plant power the Gen 2 Plant works great as you stated.

This method allows me to remove the Gen 2 Plant and power the Gen 3 Pups from the Gen 1 Plant.

It was a useless technique when I posted about it 11 years ago but it later began very useful when I started growing variegated Pisang Awak.

The partition is a temporary raised bed around the target pup to raise it's growing point so the nicely variegated pup can be successfully removed while leaving behind most of it's rhizome for propagation.

The final result will be a Gen 1 Plant powering Gen 3 Pups via a Gen 2 Rhizome.

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Jeff zone 8 N.C.

That makes perfect sense and one that would be very useful. I know you had posted about raising the growing point but I did not think about it in conjunction with being able to harvest the original Gen 2 plant to grow on and stimulate more desirable Gen 3 pups from the original mat. Before you posted this I would have just left the whole Gen 2 in ground waiting for it to do all the work. Excellent information for growers! This is why I love this group.

PR-Giants

Anytime a member removes a pup from the plant they usually leave some of the pup's rhizome with the mother plant, so in a general sense this technique is very common.

Understanding the basics of apical dominance and knowing how to manipulate it is important for anyone growing these variegated beauties.

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Lyly19

The best propagation method for quickly propagating a nicely variegated pup from a Pisang Awak mother plant while ensuring rapid growth is likely tissue culture propagation. Tissue culture propagation minimizes the risk of damaging the pup during propagation. Pokerogue

Jeff zone 8 N.C.

I think the question was asked as a teaching moment for the typical banana collectors that are visitors here. Most here do not want to deal with tissue culture as growing bananas is just a fun activity for them and tissue culture is more of a commercial enterprise. There are probably a few here that do some tissue culture though.

Foxhound

I swear PR, every time you post it's a wealth of knowledge.

Thank you for explaining this technique for the newer generation of Banana growers.

I just look up your posts and I feel like Scrooge McDuck diving into his vault of gold coins, except the gold coins are banana facts.

PR-Giants

This method is much faster than tissue culture propagation but more importantly, even though it wasn't directly stated in the original post it should have been obvious to all that the goal was to quickly produce new highly variegated offshoots and not to produce only green offshoots.

It makes no sense to use a variegated Pisang Awak for the purpose of tissue culturing green plantlets and the original pup would be destroyed during the process.

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PR-Giants

I was looking through my photo gallery this morning and when I saw this photo it reminded me of this thread.

The mother plant (Gen 1) is not in the photo but it's clear where it was connected to the large sword pup (Gen 2) and the 2 smaller pups are Gen 3.

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PR-Giants

When I took this photo I separated all three pups for replanting but if I had chosen I could have removed the Gen 2 pup while leaving the two Gen 3 pups still connected to the Gen 1 mother plant. This would have transferred apical dominance to both Gen 3 pups plus all newly formed Gen 3 pups. This transfer will allow the grower to quickly grow Gen 3 plants while discarding the undesirable plants. This is all being fueled by the Gen 1 mother plant.

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PR-Giants

Here's another situation...

I have a VDN mother plant that has already been harvested and it's pseudostem has been removed. It has an offshoot that it's first four leaves were variegated and every leaf since has been completely green, seven green to date.

What should I do to maximize my chances of getting a variegated plant from this situation?

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Jeff zone 8 N.C.

Well you do not mention any other offshoots so I think leaving the new shoot still attached to it's VDN mother, but cutting it's trunk off after it has attained enough size and destroying its growing point would encourage a possible new and better variegated shoot from it. Also it should encourage more shoots from the original mother corm that would hopefully push new better variegated plants. I am not sure if I can explain this clearly but from what I have learned from you here, then the best new variegated shoots would be formed from the corm directly below the variegated leaves. You would find this "better chance variegated area", of the corm, by following the leaf sheath of the variegated leaves, all the way down to the corm where there would be a larger concentration of variegated cells and so a better chance of a variegated shoot from that area. I guess if I was trying to get that poorly variegated shoot to throw a better variegated plant (and I was confident enough) then I could go as far as removing the side of it's corm with the all green leaves to shift the plants efforts to growing on the variegated side.

PR-Giants

Thank you for understanding.

It would be better to leave as much of it's rhizome intact after killing the growing point because the buds in the upper leaf scars are not going to be dominant. That's why I waited for the 7 green leaves before any manipulation.

And technically the growing point doesn't have to be killed if it can be made to go dormant. Making a main growing point go dormant gives the grower more time before any rots starts but because the Pisang Awak subgroup doesn't easily rot this isn't that important in this situation.

This is probably the last pup I'm getting from this mother plant, she was harvested a long time ago and she's been worked hard ever since.

Here's a pic of a nice offshoot I removed from her rhizome last year.

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Jeff zone 8 N.C.

" the buds in the upper leaf scars are not going to be dominant"

Great info for propagating! What are your methods for making the main growing point go dormant?

PR-Giants

Here's an easy one I call the "cincinnana technique" more photos can be seen on this member's flickr page.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hostaf...th/29144740623

This is a Florida that had it's pseudostem bent and it's growth angle to exceed 90 degrees to force dormancy which made the rhizome produce many pups. The mother plant's main growing point was restarted many months later after the pot was stood up. The long dormancy caused the mother plant to restart as a young tiny plant. I haven't confirmed this but I'm sure this process can be repeated for thousands of years with the same growing point.

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