Sri Lanka’s pioneering tissue culture technology company, Serendib Horticulture Technologies, which completed consultancies in Qatar and Rwanda during the past few years, has now been consulted by companies and foreign governments to introduce new systems and improve existing systems to ensure food security in Pakistan, Iran and Rwanda.
Serendib Horticulture Chairman Dilip de Silva explaining further said that the Sindh government of Pakistan is encouraging the private sector of Pakistan to get into agriculture by implementing public-private partnerships with government institutes.
Production of planting material through tissue culture technology is one such project. Serendib Horticulture will be partnering this project as experts in plant tissue culture to establish a commercial tissue culture lab, engage in capacity building and developing protocols for local fruit crops.
This project is at its pre-operational phase where the designing of the project is done by Serendib Horticulture. Chairman de Silva further stated that employees of Serendib Horticulture will be seconded for the project for training purposes.
Iran, which is highly advanced in tissue culture technology, has consulted Serendib Horticulture to commercialize tissue culture. This is a great honour to the company and to Sri Lanka.
The company has undertaken a contract to transform an existing tissue culture lab into a commercial entity.
Dilip de Silva who has visited Iran on this project will be leading a team of company experts during October to transfer technology and to implement commercial systems, mainly in the area of ornamental plants.
The company has now been hired by another company in Rwanda to establish a biotechnology center with funds from the government and donor agencies. The project will include a commercial tissue culture laboratory and a virus indexing unit. Rwanda which has an abundance of resources for agriculture will be focusing on banana, pineapple, passion fruit and strawberry. The company has already been given a contract to produce over 200,000 plants of Banana and over 4,000,000 plants of pineapple. This is a huge project to produce such a large number of planting material, said Dilip de Silva.
The company has been invited to present the project and the business plan in October, to the Minsters of Agriculture, donor agencies and banks who are supporting the project in Rwanda.
“We will be using our experience in the field and will give opportunities to our staff to work and train Rwandan staff to establish a tissue culture facility. In this business you cannot compromise on quality and productivity with low cost options, especially in commercial plant tissue culture. Sri Lanka needs to harness the experience and the expertise available locally to develop agriculture, if not we will always remain a third world country.”
The company is now working on expanding its facilities to meet the demand internationally and Serendib Horticulture is hoping to produce over 1.5 million pineapple plants for local farmers in the coming year. (IH)
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