-by Shamiah Grant

Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, says that production of high- quality plantlets from the $450 Million Biotechnology lab will reach the one
million target by September 2026.

It is envisioned that this target will be sustained annually, ensuring the delivery of clean, disease-free planting materials to farmers.

“So, I am very happy that we are now producing it and this is the only one of the kind here in Guyana, and I don’t think any part of the Caribbean has this number of plantlets that we have cultured. I am hoping that by mid this year we can start sharing out planting materials to farmer,” the minister said.

This initiative is intended to support the cultivation of crops such as pineapple, citrus, plantain, sweet potatoes, breadfruit, sugar cane and exotic fruits.

“As we said that we will do special types of planting materials for farmers, and now we will be working with NARI to plan that process, they have already started on some crops already that are being grown in Guyana and we will also be developing some special crops so that we can make farmers go into large scale production in various areas,” he added.

The laboratory, which was launched last year, is the product of a collaboration with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) of India. It is an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) financed project, under the Sustainable Agricultural development program.