Introduction – Plantain banana is a major crop for food supply in tropical areas, while facing pests and diseases affecting fruit yield and quality. Within the agroecological transition context, the development of prophylactic methods aimed at avoiding the use of pesticides is an avenue worth exploring. Among these methods, an in vivo technique of mass propagation of shoots called PIF (from the French ‘Plants Issus de Fragment de tige’, meaning ‘shoots resulting from corm fragments’), was developed in Cameroon to multiply and sanitize plantain shoots at the farm level. Despite showing promising results, studies on factors that could improve its efficiency are lacking. Materials and methods – The effects of three main factors (temperature, hormone and light) were investigated in separate assays within semi-controlled environmental conditions, in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, to measure how these factors affect the efficiency of the PIF technique during the reproductive stage. Five response variables were used to assess the number and the robustness of daughter shoots produced. Results and discussion – PIF technique performance increased with temperatures above 30 °C (>15 shoots per corm, >25 roots per shoot, >80 cm root length), LED light application for 15 minutes per day, and synthetic hormone supplementation. A moderate but significant virus sanitation potential of this technique was found, with up to 36.7% daughter plants sanitized from banana mild mosaic virus (BanMMV) infected mother plants. These results open perspectives for larger scale assays to refine an appropriate methodology allowing farmers to become more autonomous in healthy planting material satisfying the principles of agroecological transition.