Short communication Bunch stalk feeding of urea in banana Musa (AAB group) `Nendran' T.K. Ancy, S. Kurien * College of Horticulture, Vellanikkara, Thrissur 680 656, Kerala, India Accepted 19 August 1999 Abstract The in¯uence of urea feeding at the cut bunch stalk end of the rachis of banana was studied in tissue culture plants of `Nendran' banana having uniform sized bunches. A preliminary study for standardising the dose of urea showed the superiority of placing 30 g urea on two-week-old bunches. The main experiment on bunch stalk feeding, also revealed that placing 30 g urea on the cut stalk end at two weeks or at four weeks after complete emergence of the bunch resulted in maximum yield and other elite yield attributes. Bunch weight, ®nger weight, length and grade of `D' ®nger and ®lling index are the yield parameters mostly affected by the bunch stalk feeding. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Banana; Urea placement; Yield and yield attributes; Musa; Urease 1. Introduction Bunch management in banana is a concept gaining in importance and even simple techniques of bagging/sleeving/covering (Trupin, 1959; Perumal and Adam, 1968; Walker, 1975; Istraeli et al., 1980; Daniells et al., 1987, 1992; Johns and Scott, 1989) and male bud pruning (Simmonds, 1959; Sampaio and Simao, 1970; Walker, 1973; Meyer, 1975; Jaramillo, 1982; Amma et al., 1986; Daniels et al., 1994; Irizarry and Rivera, 1991; Irizarry and Goenaga, 1995; Galan Sauco et al., 1996) increase yield, ®nger weight and size of harvested bunches. Most Scientia Horticulturae 84 (2000) 205±212 * Corresponding author: fax: 91-487370019. E-mail address: kauhqr@ren.nic.in (S. Kurien). 0304-4238/00/$ ± see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0304-4238(99)00110-7