ABSTRACT
Currently the production of improved banana and plantain cultivars that are nutritionally acceptable to consumers, with resistance or tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, and reduced post-harvest losses, has been met largely through conventional breeding that has made steady progress over the years producing a large number of hybrids (Rowe 1984; Vuylsteke et al. 1995). The pressure of an increasing population and consequent increase in demand for food on the one hand and the depletion of arable land on the other have placed new emphases on conventional plant breeding (Pillay et al. 2011). However, conventional breeding of Musa is handicapped by sterility and a number of other factors that are discussed in Pillay et al. (2002), and Pillay and Tripathi (2006, 2007).
