The Ministry of Agriculture yesterday announced that Guyana’s tissue culture facility is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2025, significantly boosting plantlet production from 13,000 to one million annually.
A release from the Department of Public Information said that the tissue culture and micropropagation facility is being constructed at the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara.
Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, speaking at a community engagement last Saturday at the Beterverwagting Community Centre on the East Coast of Demerara, stated that the tissue culture facility will play a vital role in addressing the growing demand for planting materials and advancing the country’s food production efforts.
He pointed out that the eleven nurseries currently operational across the country cannot meet farmers’ increasing needs for planting materials.
“The couple of seeds and planting materials that we are giving out cannot prepare our country to be that food hub that we want it to be. This tissue culture lab will produce millions of planting materials… We have an international company that is working with us.”
The release explained that once operational, the lab will have the capacity to produce a wide variety of planting materials, including all types of citrus plants, tailored to meet farmers’ specific needs. The state-of-the-art facility will produce high-yielding, disease- and pest-resistant plantlets, eradicating the need for farmers to utilise chemicals on their farms.
A plantlet is a miniature or young plant that is produced on the leaf margins or the aerial stalks of another plant. Micropropagation is a technique for propagating plants by using minuscule fragments of plant tissue extracted from a carefully selected and prepared mother plant, and growing them in a laboratory setting to create new plants.
Last year, the Government of Guyana through the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Energy Resource Institute (TERI) of India had inked an agreement to create the facility, the release added.
