Bananas are tropical fruits grown worldwide playing a key role in market trade and especially used as main food source for low income populations. In Brazil, bananas are mainly consumed in natura, occupying the second largest internal market. Nevertheless, this crop presents low availability of productive commercial varieties with good agronomic characteristics. A strategy undertaken to solve this problem is the development of new cultivars through conventional genetic breeding methods. However, this strategy presents some obstacles such as female sterility and low number of seeds. In order to overcome these shortcomings, use of mutation induction aiming the selection of mutants with desirable agronomic characteristics seems to have great potential for developing new cultivars.
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