EVALUATING INITIAL PERFORMANCE OF MACROPROPAGATED SEEDLINGS AS COMPARED TO TISSUE CULTURE AND NATURALLY REGENERATED SUCKERS Martha R. Kasyoka 1*, M. Mwangi 1, N. Kori 3, J. Mbaka 3 Gitonga N 2., 1 Department of Agricultural Science and Technology, Kenyatta University, P.O. Box ,Nairobi ; 2 Meru University Collage,P.O. Box 972, Code Meru 3 Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, P.O. Box 220, Thika, Kenya. *Corresponding author Tel.: INTRODUCTION Banana is an important crop for food security Kenya. A good source of animal feed, plays a very good environmental role and an its suitable crop for intercropping, in addition it’s a source of income to farmers and employment to middle traders who handle the crop from the farms to the market. However the crop is faced by many challenges among them lack of enough planting materials. Although tissue culture was introduced to close this gap its adoption up to date is still very low. Tissue culture (TC) seedlings above what is affordable to small scale farmers who are the main stalk holders in the industry due to high production cost associated with TC production.. As a result farmers in Kenya continually rely on suckers; which are slow, does not yield much in addition to being source of pest and diseases spread within and between farms. Macropropagation technology relies on simple and cost effective method which can be used to increase seedlings at farm level, its has been used successfully in other countries like Cameroon and Nigeria, in Kenya there is a limited evaluation of this technology, a research project was therefore set to evaluate initial performance of macropropagated seedling as compared to TC seedlings and conventional suckers. METHODOLOGY Ten seedlings of naturally regenerated suckers, tissue culture and macropropagation technologies were established in a complete randomized block in well prepared field. Initial growth of this seedling were monitored for a period of six moths. Data on: number of leaves, diameter of the stem from a point initially ten centimeters from the ground, and height of the plantlets was recorded after every 2 weeks after trans planting. RESEARCH APPLICATION The results obtained macropropagation technology can be used effectively to increase seedlings at farm level due to its simplicity, cost effect fullness in addition it can produces superior seedlings.. Figure 1. A- natural regenerated suckers, B- tissue culture method, C-macropropagation method Acknowledgement: The authors wish to thank RUFORUM for financial support, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) Thika, and FACT Ltd. for facilitating this research. A B C Results: No significance difference in growth between tissues cultured seedlings and macropropagated seedlings. Naturally regenerated suckers had the lowest growth rate and compared to the others and the growth was significantly different. Macropropagated seedlings were found to have better post transplant establishment than tissue culture seedling. There growth rate increased continually after transplanting while for TC seedlings the growth rate increased abruptly but decreased gradually from the eighth week. Naturally regenerated seedling growth rate though increasing it was at a very low rate Figure2. 1- natural regenerated sucker with leaves removed and roots pared,2- transplanted tissue culture seedling after hardening process, C-macropropagation method, 3- transplanted macropropagated seedling after hardening process, 4- Established field of the three types of seedlings for comparisons Figure 2; Banana intercrops