Gonja will give you additional income

Gonja is the Luganda name for a particular variety of bananas that are steamed or roasted for eating. The ripe gonja banana fruits (plantain) may also be sliced and fried or sun dried to be consumed as gonja crisps.

Value addition

People engaged in value addition prepare the crisps and pack them for sale in shops and supermarkets. They are normally eaten like biscuits when drinking tea or coffee. They are a delicacy and not usually part of the daily menu in every household. Gonja banana bunches are often harvested and left to get ripe before the fruits are steamed or roasted. Roasted gonja bananas are quite common at road side markets where travellers usually stop to buy eatables ---at places such as Mbikko on Kampala-Jinja Highway, or Mbizzi Nnya and Lukaya on Kampala-Masaka Highway, and Kyabakuza and Kyazanga on Masaka-Mbarara Highway.

They are also to be seen in some spots in many towns where vendors roast the bananas and sell them to passers-by. Some vendors carry them along streets and into shopping malls selling them to interested buyers.

Big demand

In some hotels and restaurants steamed ripe gonja bananas are served as part of the menu. Gonja juice is said to be very good and in some communities gonja is used to make beer. The demand for gonja banana is so big that traders regularly traverse the countryside in Uganda and in the DRC to purchase the food crop.

Varieties 

Two or three cultivars of gonja bananas are grown in the banana growing areas of Eastern Africa and different farming communities give them different names. The Baganda grow manjaaya and nakabululu. The manjaaya cultivar has fewer but larger fruits while nakabululu has a lot more fruits which are however thinner. Generally nakabululu is sweeter and easier to prepare for eating by roasting.

Model farmer

Rev Fr Henry Kasule, Parish Priest of

Kyanukuzi Parish in Masaka Diocese, out of a desire to sustain food security for the priests and subordinate staff at the parish, decided to plant some 170 manjaaya suckers as part of the parish’s banana plantation of close to five acres.

The priest also grows other banana varieties including bogoya (Cavendish), mpologoma, kibuzi (matooke) and several others.  “I planted the gonja bananas a little over two years ago and we have been harvesting them for our eating but we have also been selling some bunches because of the big demand for gonja,” he told Seeds of Gold.

“Within just two years, I can tell you, the parish has earned more than Shs2m just from the sale of gonja alone.” Due to the ongoing severe drought, he said, the bunches have gotten smaller.

However to the onlooker his gonja banana plantation is quite impressive. There were some gonja banana trees heavily laden with manjaaya bunches and propped up with long wooden poles to stop them from falling due to weight.

How he does it

The area occupied by manjaaya cultivars measured about just a quarter of an acre and the spacing between the cultivars was about three metres. If he had planted perhaps an acre or more his revenue from the crop would obviously be a lot higher, which should be the reason for many other Ugandan farmers to try gonja farming.

He said that since the soil in his garden is still naturally fertile he did not have to use any fertilisers when planting the gonja bananas. “All we did was to identify disease-free suckers which we bought at Shs1,000 each. We dug quite wide holes almost a metre wide and filled them up with top soil before planting the suckers.”

Organic manure

These days however he applies organic manure in the garden. He advises intending gonja farmers to plant at the beginning of the rain season. His garden is still doing very well because of his sustenance of the best practices. The entire garden is mulched with dry maize left-over plants and dry banana leaves. Mulching controls weeds and the mulch material itself turns into manure after some time besides conserving water in the soil.

Agronomy

A farmer growing gonja on less fertile soil can still come up with good yields by applying organic manure such as cow dung or compost.

Fr Kasule has done exactly that to grow bananas in the less fertile areas of the parish land.

“After digging the holes they should be filled up with topsoil mixed with compost or any other natural manure like livestock droppings,” says Fr Kasule. “Like in the case of all other banana varieties the suckers should be obtained from healthy and good performing mother plants, free from diseases and pests.”

Although he paid for his suckers when he was establishing his gonja garden, Fr Kasule gives out suckers free of charge to all those that are interested in growing gonja.

“It is the reason that I have not yet pruned some of the rootstocks,” he explained. “As you can see some of the rootstocks are well pruned with one mature banana tree, a smaller one and a very little one.” 

Some people describe this as mother, daughter, and granddaughter. Agriculturists say that the advantages of pruning banana rootstocks include higher total yield per unit area, larger bunches, less chances of pest attack and keeping the garden less bushy. For some of the rootstocks in his garden that are not yet pruned Fr Kasule says he is reserving them for people who would like to get suckers for planting in their own gardens.

A gonja banana rootstock by nature produces far more suckers than are needed for profitable farming.

Like other types of bananas gonja does best in areas that receive well distributed rains throughout the year. When mature the fruits ripen and become yellow which is also a sign that the banana bunch is ready for harvesting.

Weevils

Gonja banana may be attacked by weevils but the farmer can minimize this by keeping some space around the base of the rootstock uncovered by mulch and generally observing field sanitation.

It is also good practice for the farmer to regularly consult the area agricultural services extension worker about any issues regarding how to overcome crop pests and diseases.