This archive report was first published on 10 July 2020.
On a quiet farm in Machakos County, Winfred Mbolu and her husband Sila have created a thriving business by hardening off banana seedlings. The couple's farm is a haven for tropical fruit trees, with a variety of seedlings under shade nets.
Winfred, a head teacher at Mtito Andei Primary School in Makueni County, started the farm in 1997 as a way to green her compound. She acquired banana plantlets from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and began hardening them off in a greenhouse.
"We add value to citrus fruits, mangoes, and macadamia seedlings by grafting indigenous rootstock with scions of desirable traits," Winfred explains. "We also sell palms and harden off tissue culture bananas to enhance their survival once they are transferred to the fields."
The couple's hardening off process involves planting the seedlings in a greenhouse for a month before transferring them to plastic pots with sterilized soil and manure. The seedlings are then ready for sale at between Sh120 and Sh150.
Prof Aggrey Bernard Nyende, the director of the Institute of Biotechnology Research at JKUAT, says that hardening off helps bananas propagated from cloned seedlings to take a shorter period to fruit compared to those propagated from suckers.
"Suckers take time as they endure the shock of the new environment," Prof Nyende explains. "Although many smallholder farmers still use suckers to propagate bananas, we discourage them because they transfer pests and diseases from one orchard to the other, and produce relatively lower yields."
The Mbolus' farm is just one example of the many agribusiness enterprises that have been spawned by the tissue culture technology. The technology has not only drawn new banana farmers but also created opportunities for entrepreneurs like the Mbolus.
