practices has been inconsistent among farming communities
(Kagezi et al., 2006). Farmers feel that debudding affects the
quality of the banana, especially for the juice cultivars (Bagamba
et al., 2006), and the decontamination of tools after use with
every plant is laborious.
Experience with bacterial wilt diseases in other crops has
shown that resistant varieties are often the most sustainable
method of disease management. In this study, we have generated transgenic banana plants containing and expressing the
Hrap gene from sweet pepper. This is one of the most important
hypersensitive cell death (HCD)-associated genes that can be
utilized to protect plants from bacterial pathogen attack (Chen
et al., 2000). Disease resistance resulting from enhanced HCD is
an important mechanism of plant defence. HRAP has bee