Nairobi - Farmers in Kenya are doubling and even tripling their banana yields through the use of tissue-cultured banana plants. Matin Qaim, an agricultural economist at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn, Germany, predicts significant gains in income for poverty- stricken banana farmers in his new study, 'Assessing the Impact of Banana Biotechnology in Kenya.' This is particularly important news for Kenya's women, who produce most of the comtry's food, including bananas.Despite favorable conditions for growing banana, Kenya's average yields have been a meager 14 tons per hectare -less than one-third of the crop's potential. An international collaborative biotechnology project launched in 1996, however, is proving that Kenya, including small scale and resource poor farmers, can achieve the crop's potential yields.Kenya's current low production levels are caused by the repeated, regular infestation of its banana stock by damaging pests and diseases: weevils, nematodes, Panama disease, and the especially virulent black sigatoka. All of these diseases are easily spread from infected plants through normal propagation techniques, which use suckers from adult banana plants to grow new ones.By switching from suckers to tissue-cultured plantlets produced from the 'cells of healthy banana plants that are grown in vitro (i.e., in a culture dish or test tube), farmers can grow clean, pathogen-free banana plants. Coupled with the adoption of good plantation management practices to reduce the incidence of nematodes and weevils, average yields climb much higher.