robert0514

Hey I've successfully tissue cultured a few bananas but I would like to know about crossbreeding. Is it similar to TC or is it completely different, if any of you have any success also tell me.
Thanks
Robert

jmoore

Crossbreeding requires sexual reproduction, so you need pollen from one plant and add this to the female part of the other plant and bob's your uncle, crossbreeding.

TC is creating clones

robert0514

Oh its that simple, but doesn't this only work with bananas that produce seeds eg musa cheesmani

sunfish

No

Banana genome sequencing gives a boost to pest-plagued fruit - Los Angeles Times

shannondicorse

Robert and other banana growers,

1) You can do (sexless) protoplast hybridisation; you can strip the walls off cells in a free culture and then encourage cell fusion. I know of one postgrad project on Trinidad trying to do this. The problem is massive karyotype instability - you get a lot of odd chromosome combinations that yield non-starters.

2) Getting the fused cells to form callus and meristems - plantlets - is also trying

3) I posted a video of some young people who are doing open-field polycross to wild bananas on Trinidad.. problem is this can be very expensive - except in the tropics. Once you can get viable pollen from a cultivar - even 2-3 grains per anther...you're in business!

FOR A MORE DETAILED DISCUSSION WRITE ME AT: shannon.di.corse@gmail.com

thanks,
shannon