‘A game changer’ for Guyana- New tissue culture lab to boost agri production

A $402.5 million tissue culture laboratory is being established on the East Coast of Demerara (ECD).

This lab will allow local authorities to use plant fragments to produce millions of plantlets, a move that Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha says will significantly boost local production.

The building should be operational by the first quarter of 2025. Once completed and operations, millions of plantlets will be produced annually.

Currently, Guyana only produces about 15,000 plantlets from nurseries across the country. Plantlets are young or small plants; when produced in the laboratory, they can then be planted in other spaces.

Not only will it increase the amount of plantlets available for cultivation, but the the large-scale production of non-traditional crops for Guyana, such as berries, will be possible.

“This will be a game changer for us,” Mustapha said on Monday during his ministry’s end-of-year press conference.

He added, “This here will help us to expand Guyana’s agricultural output.”

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.

Last year, the Government of Guyana through the Ministry of Agriculture and the Energy Resource Institute (TERI) of India inked an agreement to create the facility.