Pengembangan Pisang sebagai Penopang Ketahanan Pangan Nasional (Banana Development as the Support of National Food Security)

Abstract

Banana is relatively high adaptive tropical plant, especially during drought condition. Banana development, especially at the prone areas of foodless and nutritionless, expected to increase the food security. Nevertheless, national banana production has been threatened by blood desease attack which is spreaded by insects through the banana male bud. The invention of budless mutant banana at Sulawesi on 1992 by the Budenhagen team, and then continued by PKBT (Center for Tropical Fruit Studies) IPB team since 2008, raises the hope of blood desease problem solution. Initial observation activity was conducted at the origin area of the banana, Kepulauan Selayar and Bone District, South Sulawesi Province. Based on the observation, Kepok Loka Nipah genotype appointed as candidate of superior variety because it has productivity up to 41 kg/plant, light yellow pulp color, and sweet taste. The observation of phenotype and genetic characters were conducted to get data needed for the releasing varieties proposal that will be send to Tim Penilai dan Pelepasan Varietas/Varieties Assessment and Release Team (TP2V), Departemen of Agriculture. According to varieties release assesment by TP2V on November 4th, 2009, Kepok Loka Nipah Banana was approved, and given offical name: Unti Sayang. Variety release was conducted in collaboration with Local Government of South Sulawesi. The duplication of mother plant as the source of propagation seeds has been done and planted at PKBT experimental fiel Station at Pasir Kuda. By now, there are approximately 200 plantets of Unti Sayang banana that will be reproduced for the dissemination materials at 2010.