Growth and Development of Bananas (Musa sp.) Cultivated in Agroecological Systems in Northeastern Brazil

The banana is the most eaten tropical fruit and the second most harvested in the world, losing only to the orange. In this research, we aimed to evaluate the growth and development of different banana cultivars in response to the use of different types of seedlings and management methods used for plant propagation in agro-ecological systems. An experiment under randomized block design was applied in a factorial scheme of 2 × 2 × 2, with four blocks and two replicates in each block. The treatments comprised all combinations of the following sources of variation- cultivar—‘Pacovan’ and ‘Prata-anã’; seedlings weight—between 0.5 to 1.0 kg and above 1.0 kg; and method of propagation by rhizomes—with and without the acclimatization technique called “ceva”. The efficiency of each treatment was measured as the number of days to occur the following events- first sprouting, flowering, final harvest and the interval between flowering and harvest. No source of variation affected the day of flowering. Therefore, we fixed the value of flowering days as 260, independently of the cultivar or method of propagation. The analysis of the coordinate factors revealed that the variables that best explained the studied events were period of final harvest (92%), followed by interval between flowering and harvest (75%) and period of initial sprouting (71%). The propagation of ‘Prata-anã’ without “ceva” had the greatest efficiency, where as the propagation of ‘Pacovan’ without “ceva” had the worse efficiency. The propagations with “ceva” obtained intermediate values.