Tissue Culture at the Food and Agricultural Research Council

Tissue Culture Section of FARC consists of a tissue culture laboratory and adjacent Nursery facilities for acclimatization of tissue culture plantlets.

A number of tissue culture projects are being carried out at the Tissue Culture Section, in the framework of a Tissue Culture/ Micro-propagation Programme. The objective of the programme is to develop appropriate protocols for in- vitro initiation, regeneration and rapid multiplication of several crops (Food crops such as banana, breadfruit, ornamentals e.g Anthurium, gerbera, and novel crops such as Stevia) of economic importance. The aim is to help diversify the agricultural sector by the provision of clean tissue culture planting materials to the planter community that will enable production of quality food/flowers for both the local and export market.

The FARC micro-propagation resources also cater for research project, of FARC & AREU, and are used as training facility for fresh graduates under Government Empowerment Program, Students Placement Program and Secondary School students doing Biology at A level.

As tissue culture, a rapid method of propagation, is quite costly in terms of all the inputs, trials need to be done: