Bananas NSW (10%) together with BIPB (matched by HAL) is supporting this project to facilitate industry improvement and sustainability by maintaining access to valuable varieties and disease free planting material. The subtropical industry in particular requires of a range of varieties to overcome disease pressure and to develop unique and sought after fruit. The national industry must gain a reputation for quality and the varieties that will present the best quality to consumer must be identified for each growing area. We currently maintain 363 accessions under low growth conditions using world’s best practice. This laboratory maintains one of the largest collections of banana varieties used specifically for industry development in the world. To satisfy industry needs we maintain these varieties “on call” ready to supply plants in whatever quantity is required by researcher or grower, unlike the conservation collections in other countries that limit supply to only 5 plantlets per variety per recipient per year! What this means is that we have a big task to produce these plants in the fastest time and in good condition.

Plantlets have been supplied to researchers and growers. This year we have produced and sent 81 separate consignments of plants  (20 consignments for research and 61 consignments for growers).  Banana germplasm was supplied to industry in the form of disease indexed tissue cultured plants.  Roughly equal quantities of banana germplasm were requested for either researchers or by industry members. The end-uses of these banana plantlets are described in the graph below with research underway in many areas.  Recipients covered production costs for these plants as part of the cost recovery scheme. NSW growers have been proactive in obtaining potential niche varieties and the area under production is now slowly expanding.  We are planning next year to begin basic trials of some of the more promising niche varieties under subtropical conditions in conjunction with NSW Dept. of Agriculture and BananasNSW.  The challenge will be to identify the varieties that satisfy the commercial requirements (yield, disease, field management, handling, presentation etc.) while offering a unique and sought after product to the consumer.  Once identified, these varieties will have to reach a critical mass of supply to establish themselves as an identifiable product in the market.

AQIS registration has been renewed to facilitate safe importation of varieties (reg. No. Q0310). Importation of new varieties has been facilitated safely and efficiently. This year 20 new banana accessions have been introduced into Australia via this laboratory.  There are currently 37 accessions undergoing post entry evaluation (some introduced last year)

QBAN industry support provided.  QBAN continues to expand as an important sector of the Australian Banana industry. All of last year’s facilities renewed membership.  This year we have 30% more fully accredited QBAN facilities than last year.  There are currently 24 QBAN facilities, 5 commercial laboratories in Queensland, 4 commercial laboratories in NSW, 6 commercial nurseries in Queensland and 3 in NSW. The remainder are research facilities.  Ongoing work needs to be done to develop lines of communication between growers and QBAN facilities.  The lack of communication results in over supply or undersupply of tissue culture plants. QBAN managers and growers can also benefit from feedback so that they can improve the quality of their product.   There is a need to encourage growers to replant with disease free tissue cultured plants and must work to removing obstacles.  This means we also need to assist the QBAN facilities so that they can cope with some lack of planning by growers?