ABSTRACT
Musa is one of two or three genera in the family Musaceae, it includes bananas and plantains which are cultivated throughout the humid tropics and subtropics. The study was carried out at the Horticultural unit of the Teaching and Research Farm of Department of Crop science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Benin, Benin City (6º 20’ 01.32’ N, 6º 40’ 00’ N, 5º 36’ 00.54’ E, 6º 00’ 00’ E, elevation 500 feet above sea level), Nigeria. The sword suckers (having narrow, sword-shaped leaves), with a pseudostem of 5 to 40 cm in height, of two plantain cultivars (HexUkigue and FHIA20) and two banana cultivar (Bita3 and FHIA18) were used for the study. The experiment was a 4×3 factorial experiment and laid out as a Completely Randomized Design with three replications. The result indicated that the treatment had a significant influence (P<0.05) on the number of days to first sprout, shoot height, number of plantlets per corm and number of plantlets of the cultivar BITA 3, FHIA18, FHIA20 and HexUkigue. Immature coconut water showed the highest number of plantlet at 2.85 plants per corm, followed by control at 2.04 plants per corm while the cultivar FHIA20 had the highest number of plantlet per corm at 3.33 plants per corm followed by BITA3 at 2.50 plants per corm and then FHIA18 being the lest at 1.72 plants per corm. However, the treatments and the cultivars showed no significant difference xiii in the number of days to first sprout, number of sprouted buds per corm, number of shoots per corm, shoot height; shoot collar girth, number of leaves per sucker, number of roots, number of plantlets per corm, number of plantlets, number of survived plantlet and plantlet survival percentage.
