The seedling from stem fragment (PIF) method: cultivation and sanitation of plantain at the farm scale

Abstract

In the context of agroecological transition in which synthetic products are increasingly limited and criticized, prophylactic measures are presented as a path of investigation. In the French West Indies, civil society, particularly marked by the scandal of chlordecone, an insecticide used in the past to control banana weevils, is urging actors in the agricultural sector to find more agroecological solutions. Among them, the PIF (Plants Issus de Fragment de tige or ‘Seedling resulting from stem fragment’ in English) method was developed in Cameroon to address the lack of healthy plantain seedlings and has shown particularly interesting results. The PEYI experimental unit of the IN RAE Antilles-Guyane center adapted this method to Guadeloupean conditions, as part of the IntensEcoPlantain project in 2019 and 2020, to enable producers to multiply and sanitize plantain plants on the farm scale autonomously using agroecological
practices. More than three years after the beginning of the project, the method has been adapted to the conditions of the territory, allowing the multiplication of up to 20 times of the number of small plants for a cost of less than €1.60 per plant. Workshops were organised to disseminate the method to farmers and several of them have now adopted it.