Time ripe for change as banana farmers embrace technology

Farmers in Othaya have started growing the matoke tissue culture bananas to increase their earnings from the crop and improve their food security.

Already, more than 200 farmers have received shoots which they have planted on their land.

Majority of the farmers in Nyeri-South district have been planting traditional bananas using old farming methods, thus resulting in poor yields.

Esau Kioni, the pioneer of the initiative, said that he was advised by one of his friend from Kisii to plant a few of the matoke and Giant Cavedish tissue culture bananas in his farm in Othaya and this is when he decided to buy some plantlets from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Technology (JKUAT).

Surprisingly, the bananas turned to be a worthy project, encouraging him to spread it to other interested farmers.

It was then that Mr Kioni, a Kenya Power and Lighting Company director bought more of the plantlets from the institution, which he is now distributing to interested farmers.

“I am selling each plantlet at Sh100 but I have come up with my own programme in which I supply them for free to poor families who cannot afford to buy,” he said.

According to Mr Kioni, the programme is meant to improve the livelihood and food security of the poor families in the district.

The initiative, he says, is to encourage small-scale farmers to use clean, disease-and-insect-free planting materials obtained by using these new propagation techniques.

Says Mr Kioni: “Farmers in this district have rated bananas as an important commodity, and the new varieties would translate to increased income.”

Majority of the farmers who have received the plantlets are from Karima and Chinga locations of Othaya. Although they are yet to harvest their first yields, Mr Kioni says that if the required planting procedure is followed, the two varieties, which take one year and four months to mature, yields between 50 and 70 kilogrammes.

The two varieties are said to be doing well in coffee growing areas which Othaya is one of them.

According to Dr Jesca Mbaka, the head of Crop production Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) in Thika, the Kisii Matoke TC gives high yields because it’s a superior variety.

“Bananas can grow anywhere if provided with enough water throughout,” she adds. Most banana farmers across the country, says Dr Mbaka, do not care for their banana crops throughout, leading to poor harvest.

The technique involves growing banana tissue culture in a laboratory for transplant into the farm. Because of the highly controlled environment, tissue culture propagation significantly reduces disease and improves yield when cultivated under good farming practices, she says.