Mediawatch

• Blog Actions
• RSS

The book “Genomics of Tropical Crop Plants” is the first volume in a series of books on plant genetics and genomics, and includes a chapter on banana and plantain. The book, edited by Paul H. Moore and Ray Ming, is published by Springer. The banana and plantain chapter (read the abstract here) is authored by N Roux, F-C Baurens, J Dolezel, E H?ibová, P Heslop-Harrison, C Town, T Sasaki, T Matsumoto, R Aert, S Remy, M Souza and P Lagoda. To purchase the book, go to tinyurl.com/46lzgv.

The Australian Banana Grower’s Association has built a pilot scale reactor that produces methane from banana waste. The prototype is based on research conducted by Bill Clarke from the University of Queensland.

The Banana bunchy top virus continues to make headlines in Hawaii, this time on Molokai, where extension efforts are underway to control the spread of the disease. It was first observed on Kaua’i in 1997, reaching O’ahu eight years later.

Benjamin Chege from the National Horticultural Centre in Kenya says that the future of tissue-culture bananas lies in reaching out to farmers who own large farms.