bananas and microorganisms 1 - Growing Bananas with trees and livestock: young farmer business groups improve crop and natural resource health and market links for rural well-being.

Rural communities in the Lake Victoria basin from Western Kenya in a broad band following the lake shores through much of Uganda into north-western Tanzania have traditionally depended on their perennial banana gardens for food. They have selected a diversity of East African Highland banana cultivars as a food and beverage crop, adopted exotic cultivars for specific uses and have developed technologies for sustainable production using grass mulch, animal manure and careful management of mat density. The objective of the project is to evaluate and optimize these technologies using microbiological/molecular techniques.