National Banana Research Program

Field Testing begins
Black Sigatoka (a leaf spot disease caused by the fungus Mycosphaerella fijiensis) alone can reduce yields by 30-50%. The causal fungus affects all traditional plantain cultivars in West and Central Africa and most of the widely grown cultivars in Eastern Africa. To confer enhanced resistance to Black Sigatoka disease, genetic engineering in banana promises to be a reliable method to move desired resistance traits into appropriate germplasm. Banana transformation is routine in the most commonly grown varieties and is being developed for the East African highland banana.
In this project, ´Gros Michel´(GM) banana cultivar have been transformed with two rice chitinase genes (rcc2 and rcg3). It is known that chitinases are involved in defense mechanisms, because of their anti-fungal properties.
Following molecular and biochemical characterizations, all transgenic GM lines arebeing field-tested under confined conditions in Uganda, at NARO's research facility at Kawanda. Chitinase expression is being monitored in different environments (greenhouse and field conditions) to have a better insight in the temporal stability of transgene expression