Effect of Cutting Height of the Harvested Mother Plant Pseudostem on Growth and Yield of the Following Sucker in Embul Banana ( Musa acuminata )

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during 2008-2010 at Fruit Crop Research Development Centre, Horana Sri Lanka to study the effect of the cutting height of recently harvested parent pseudostem on growth and yield of the following sucker of Embul banana. Treatments consisted of four cutting heights from the ground surface (200 cm, 100 cm, 10 cm and 0 cm) at the time of mother plant harvest. Pseudostem with cutting heights of 200 and 100 cm gave significantly (p<0.05) higher values of plant height and stem girth of following sucker compared with cutting low (10 cm) and totally eliminated mother plant pseudostem. The cutting height of 200 cm increased bunch weight by 1.39 kg (9.3 %) and decreased the time to harvest by 14.5 days (2.9 %) compared with totally eliminated pseudostem. The increase of bunch weight resulted from an increase with the number of fingers/bunch. However there is no significant level difference for bunch weight with the cutting height of 100 treatments.