'NARITA 15'

---

'NARITA 15' is a high-yielding and disease-resistant hybrid that is related, through its female grandparent, to a group of cooking and beer bananas called East African highland bananas (EAHB). ‘NARITA 15’ is named after NARO and IITA, the institutes that jointly developed the NARITA hybrids1 .

Two crosses were performed to obtain ‘NARITA 15’. The triploid EAHB cultivar ‘Enzirabahima’ was crossed with a wild source of disease resistance to produce a tetraploid. This tetraploid was then crossed with an improved diploid to produce the triploid hybrid ‘NARITA 15’ (see Breeding strategy below).

‘NARITA 15’ has been tested on station in Uganda2 and is being evaluated in a broader range of end-users environments (including farmers’ fields), to assess its potential for adoption by farmers and consumers3 . Its primary use is as a cooking type.

Breeding strategy

Breeding scheme for 'NARITA 15'

‘NARITA 15’ is a secondary triploid obtained by crossing a disease-resistant tetraploid (660K-1) with an improved diploid (9128-3)4 .

The tetraploid female parent 660K-1 was obtained by crossing the triploid EAHB cultivar ‘Enzirabahima’ with Calcutta 4, a genebank accession of the diploid wild species Musa acuminata ssp. burmannica, which provided a copy of the so-called A genome. Calcutta 4 provided the resistance to black leaf streak.

The diploid male parent 9128-3 (who code used to be preceded by TMBx, for tropical Musa bananas5 ) had been obtained by crossing two diploid cultivars: ‘Tjau Lagada’ and ‘Pisang Lilin’.

Agronomic performance

The following agronomic data were collected during a preliminary yield trial carried out by IITA and NARO at Namulonge in Central Uganda4 :

Traits	NARITA 15*
Plant height at flowering (cm)	301.8
Pseudostem girth at flowering (cm)	46.3
Time from flowering to harvest (days)	134.9
Bunch weight (kg)	13.6
Number of hands	7.8
Number of fingers	118.4
Fruit circumference (cm)	12.1
Fruit length (cm)	17.0
Number of functional leaves at flowering	9.2
Number of functional leaves at harvest	2.9
Height of tallest sucker at flowering (cm)	231.4
Height of tallest sucker at harvest (cm)	290.5
Youngest leaf spotted at flowering	7.4
Youngest leaf spotted at harvest	2.3
Survival rate (%)	100

Reaction to diseases and pests

The scores for number of functional leaves and youngest leaf spotted at flowering and harvest indicate medium resistance to black leaf streak.

References

See also on this website

External links

Official website of Uganda's National Agricultural Research Organization, NARO and its banana research program