Months after being uprooted to facilitate housing infrastructure, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) field research programme has been relocated to Blairmont, West Coast Berbice.
Sources within the corporation told Stabroek News the field research programme was officially moved to Blairmont last month.
Currently, over 20 hectares have been cultivated with varietal sugarcane as the programme resumes. A total of 50 hectares have been set aside for the programme. The occupancy of land by the programme will not interfere with the Blairmont Estate cultivation, as the source explained the land now occupied was previously abandoned.
According to the source, it is ideal that the varietal programme has been relocated to Berbice since most of the grinding estates are located there. It was explained that the research team will be able to evaluate how effectively the varieties grown adapt to the environment.
GuySuCo Chief Executive Officer Sasenarine Singh last year said the relocation was a part of GuySuCo’s consolidating and transitional plans.
The Research Centre is now being headed by Ravi Persaud, who holds a Master of Science degree in Agronomy. Persaud took over from Gavin Ramnarain, who is no longer with the corporation and previously functioned as Head of the Research Centre.
The land that once housed the field programme was officially handed over to the Ministry of Housing and Water to facilitate the construction of homes.
In May 2022, a portion of the nursery plants from the research programme was destroyed by machinery deployed to the area to clear the land. It was reported that the land was being cleared by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) in preparation for conversion to housing purposes.
Singh had previously explained that the corporation would not be heavily impacted as there were enough plants in its nursery and primary production to cover sugarcane cultivation for the next four to five years. This was in response to concerns over what was likely to happen as a result of the uprooting and relocation.
“…I don’t see what the trouble is because we are bringing the varieties closer to the estates where the operation is. Our core operation remains at Blairmont, Rose Hall and Albion… if there is any cultivation in the varieties it has to be done in those conditions. Scientifically, there is nothing wrong being done,” Singh said
Back in 2020, over 17,000 varieties of sugarcane belonging to the GuySuCo’s Agriculture Research Centre were destroyed by squatters who sought to occupy land at Chateau Margot.
Ramnarain had called it, “devastating”. He had stated that those varieties were the only ones in existence and the corporation would never get them back.
Ramnarain had said that the squatting had started in the abandoned land of the La Bonne Intention Estate but while the estate was shut down, the research centre was still functioning. Others then began squatting close by and soon moved to the Success area having set their sights on the land used for breeding. They later set the fields ablaze.
“It’s not necessarily the burning of the fields, it’s the potential data and the 17 years of work,” Ramnarain had lamented. “Some of our staff were inconsolable when it comes to crying because you start off working here, all these little babies you grow up got destroyed and that 17 years of work to get back on track and it will not come back,” he had bemoaned, explaining that the sugarcanes they had started breeding in recent years would take years before they reach commercial stage.
