determining plastochron in banana Posted by prashanti on 17 May 2015 16:26 I would like to know how chronological age is measured in banana. In Arabidopsis, the time between successive initiations of leaf primordial is considered the plastochron, so is this true for banana and how is one to use it in experiments?
determining plastochron in banana Posted by prashanti on 17 May 2015 16:26 I would like to know how chronological age is measured in banana. In Arabidopsis, the time between successive initiations of leaf primordial is considered the plastochron, so is this true for banana and how is one to use it in experiments?
Posted by Anne Vézina on 18 May 2015 15:57 David Turner says that "chronological age is measured using time. The plastochron is the time between the appearance of successive leaf initials on the growing apex. The phyllochron is the time between the appearance of successive new leaves at the top of the pseudostem. For banana I assume there are 11 unemerged leaves within the pseudostem until the time of bunch differentiation and so for vegetative banana: plastochron= phyllochron. The number of unemerged leaves in Dwarf Cavendish (AAA) varied from 8 to 14 in the study of Summerville in SE Queensland (Summerville 1944) but the mean was about 11. Dissections I have done have supported the view that for Cavendish cultivars about 11 leaves is ok and so this is why I use that value. For precise work one would need to dissect each plant to see what was happening, especially if you thought treatments were likely to affect the number of unemerged leaves." Edmond de Langhe also suggests a paper (in French) on the banana plant's phyllotaxy published in the journal Fruits http://www.fruits-journal.org/articles/fruits/abs/2011/04/fruits110021/fruits110021.html Articles on phyllochron in the Musalit database www.musalit.org/saveSearch.php?id=e79f07f8917729cde06a7b9638f0032c For more information on the name of the different parts of the banana plant go to http://www.promusa.org/Morphology+of+banana+plant
Posted by prashanti on 18 May 2015 17:15 Thank you Anne, could you kindly send me an English translated version of the paper by Edmond de Langhe as I'm not well versed in French.
