To get rid of banana nematodes without using chemicals, farmers in East Africa had to uproot all infected plants, grow a break crop, and then replant with pest-free bananas. But, they couldn’t be sure that the new banana plants were free of nematodes. Now, low-cost tissue culture removes this obstacle and makes mass plantings of disease-free bananas possible. The break crop plus tissue-culture plantlet method was proven by farmers in Kayunga and Kayanamukaka, Uganda. Their soils were badly infested with nematodes but they didn’t want to use harmful pesticides. Now, a laboratory in Uganda produces 10 million plantlets a year by tissue culture. So, this technology has major potential for banana production in East Africa and for poor producers.