ABSTRACT
Banana and plantain are vegetatively propagated crops that are both essential components of the diet and important sources of income for about 400 million people in over 120 countries in the tropical and subtropical zones. Banana production in many countries is seriously threatened by a complex of fungal and bacterial diseases, nematodes, viruses, and insect pests. The exploitation of plant genomes and genes for plant breeding is now becoming better recognized with the advent of molecular markers, marker-assisted selection, and molecular and cytogenetic maps. Intraspecific hybridization between and among the various subspecies of M. acuminata produced a range of diploid cultivars with AA genomes. Banana clones that share similar characteristics and are considered to have arisen from a single clone by mutation are classified as subgroups. Since the 1960s chromosome banding techniques were used to provide cytological markers along the length of chromosomes, enabling easy identification of homologous pairs and individual chromosomes of a karyotype.
