Promising Crop Biotechnologies for Smallholder Farmers in East Africa: Bananas and Maize

Uganda is among the world’s leading countries in terms of banana production and consumption. Bananas occupy the largest cultivated area among staple food crops in Uganda and are primarily grown on small subsistence farms (plots of less than 0.5 ha). In addition to being a major food staple, bananas are an important source of income, with excess production sold in local markets. Average per capita annual consumption of bananas in Uganda is the highest in the world, estimated at close to 1 kg per person per day. Bananas are consumed as fruit; prepared by cooking, roasting, or drying; and fermented for the production of banana juice and alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, and gin). Most of the banana varieties grown in Uganda are endemic (indigenous) to the East African highlands—a region recognized as a secondary center of banana diversity. The East African highland banana is a unique genomic group, selected over the centuries by farmers. As many as 84 distinct varieties of endemic East African highland bananas, classified into five clone sets, are grown by farmers in the region (Karamura 1998). In Brief 24, page 1