| Summary: | Two major biotic constraints to highland cooking
banana (Musa spp., genome group AAA-EA) production in
Uganda are the banana weevil Cosmopolites sordidus and
the burrowing nematode Radopholus similis. Endophytic
Fusarium oxysporum strains inoculated into tissue culture
banana plantlets have shown control of the banana weevil
and the nematode. We conducted screenhouse and field
experiments to investigate persistence in the roots and
rhizome of two endophytic Fusarium oxysporum strains,
V2w2 and III4w1, inoculated into tissue-culture banana
plantlets of highland cooking banana cultivars Kibuzi and
Nabusa. Re-isolation of F. oxysporum showed that endophyte
colonization decreased faster from the rhizomes than
from the roots of inoculated plants, both in the screenhouse
and in the field. Whereas rhizome colonization by F.
oxysporum decreased in the screenhouse (4–16 weeks after
inoculation), root colonization did not. However, in the
field (17–33 weeks after inoculation), a decrease was
observed in both rhizome and root colonization. The results
show a better persistence in the roots than rhizomes of
endophytic F. oxysporum strains V2w2 and III4w1.
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