Musa Poovan — Mysore group (TC Culture)

Description

🟡 Musa Poovan (Poovan / Puvan, the Mysore group; also Karpura Chakkarakeli) — a slender, tangy-sweet South Indian dessert banana with firm fingers and a long shelf life. One multiplying clump per culture vessel.

🍌 About this banana

Poovan is a tall (3.5–4.5 m) AAB banana with a compact bunch of small, bright-yellow, slightly sub-acid fruit that resists finger-drop and travels well — the classic ‘temple offering’ and daily-fruit banana of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It is also the preferred variety for the crisp-chip trade at the three-quarter-mature stage.

Poovan is susceptible to banana streak and bunchy-top in old planting material, so certified tissue-culture stock is strongly recommended. It is a 14–15 month crop and ratoons well from a clean start.

🧬 Genome group & background

Triploid dessert cultivar, genome group AAB (Mysore subgroup). Grown for fresh fruit, chips and religious use in South India.

✨ Why buy it as a culture

• 🛕 Deep, steady regional demand — fresh fruit, chips and ritual use
• 🦠 Indexed clean stock — critical for a variety prone to streak and bunchy-top
• 🚚 Firm fruit with excellent shelf life and transport tolerance
• 📏 Uniform TC stand → even ratoons and simpler management
• ♻️ Multiplies readily from one clump for nursery scale-up

📊 Culture specification

Culture detail	Specification
Format	Sealed sterile culture vessel
Contents	1 multiplying clump — one clump per culture
Stage	Stage II — shoot multiplication
Medium	MS basal + BAP cytokinin, 0.7% agar
Incubation	25 ± 2 °C, 16 h photoperiod, ~40 µmol m⁻² s⁻¹
True-to-type	Clonal from an indexed mother line
Recommended climate	Warm humid tropics; 20–35 °C, irrigated

🌱 De-flasking & hardening (for the buyer)

• 🧫 On arrival: keep the vessel upright, at 24–28 °C, in bright diffuse light for 3–5 days to recover from transit
• 🪝 Sub-culture onto fresh multiplication medium in a laminar hood, or move rooted shoots to a rooting medium (½ MS + 1 mg/L IBA)
• 💧 Primary hardening: rinse agar off rooted plantlets, plant into sterile coco-peat : perlite (3:1), 90–95% RH under a humidity dome, 25–30 °C
• 🌬️ Step-down humidity over 2–3 weeks; then pot on and grow in 50% shade before field planting
• 🧴 No fertiliser for the first 10 days; then quarter-strength balanced feed

📦 What you will receive

• 1 sealed sterile culture vessel containing one actively multiplying clump (typically 3–8 shoots)
• Genotype / mother-line reference label and batch code
• Printed de-flasking & primary-hardening protocol card
• Phytosanitary documentation on request for inter-state movement

🚚 Dispatch & policy

🇮🇳 Cultures ship across India in insulated, cushioned packaging. Prepaid orders only. Each culture is produced to order from a maintained mother line, so allow 2–4 weeks for a clean, contamination-checked vessel to be ready. Living in-vitro material is perishable and cannot be returned; on the rare event of transit contamination or damage, send photos within 24 hours of delivery for a replacement. We pause dispatch during peak monsoon (December–January).