'NARITA 4'

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'NARITA 4' 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 4’ is named after NARO and IITA, the institutes that jointly developed the NARITA hybrids1 .

Two crosses were performed to obtain ‘NARITA 4’. 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 4’ (see Breeding strategy below).

‘NARITA 4’ 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 4'

‘NARITA 4’ is a secondary triploid obtained by crossing a disease-resistant tetraploid (660-K1) with an improved diploid (9128-3)4 .

The tetraploid female parent 660-K1 was obtained by crossing the triploid EAHB cultivar ‘Enzirabahima’ and 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 (whose 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

Data on the agronomic performance of NARITA 4 in various field trials.

Traits	Ugandaa4	Rwandab6
Mean plant height at flowering (cm)	293.0
Mean pseudostem girth at flowering (cm)	49.0
Mean pseudostem girth at 100 cm height (cm)		50.7±1
Mean time from flowering to harvest (days)	156.9
Mean bunch weight (kg)	20.5	16.7±0.8
Mean number of hands	8.3	8.6±0.2
Mean number of fingers	168.6
Mean number of fingers/handc		8.7±0.1
Mean fruit circumference (cm)	11.7
Mean fruit length (cm)	18.4
Mean number of functional leaves at flowering	9.6
Mean number of functional leaves at harvest	4.6
Mean height of tallest sucker at flowering (cm)	246.6
Mean height of tallest sucker at harvest (cm)	298.0
Mean youngest leaf spotted at flowering	8.6
Mean youngest leaf spotted at harvest	3.5
Survival rate (%)	100

Reaction to diseases and pests

The scores for number of functional leaves and youngest leaf spotted at flowering and harvest indicate good 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