Tissue Culture Banana Program on Guam - Successes and Challenges

Profitable production of bananas on Guam has been constrained by the limited availability of disease-free planting stock. The shortage of clean plant material can be overcome through in vitro propagation, which is efficient, fast and generates disease free plants. Guam’s Department of Agriculture in collaboration with the University of Guam launched a large-scale tissue culture propagation program concentrating their efforts on more than twenty banana varieties from the West and South Pacific regions. A year after the initiation of the program, the tissue culture laboratory produced thousands of banana plants that were distributed to local farmers and residents at a nominal cost. Local response was enthusiastic and over the next two years Department of Agriculture continued to supply plants that were far superior to plants available from other local sources. The need to carry on banana production in tissue culture become obvious and commercialization of seedling production became the next challenge. The Tissue Culture Laboratory is focusing its efforts on educating and training a local workforce that would likely find employment once private laboratories are created. Details pertaining to the establishment of this new program, its challenges and achievements will be presented and discussed.