A pioneer commercial plant tissue culture center officially launched production

The national and regional agricultural productivity is being severely hindered by unpredictable rainfall, shortage of improved varieties and diseases. Currently, improved varieties that are diseases resistant and other agricultural technologies are very much important to ensure productivity. As a result, Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara (ORDA) established a pioneer commercial plant tissue culture center at the regional capital Bahir Dar to benefit millions of farmers and investors working on agriculture.

The tissue culture center has launched in October, 2015. Since April 2016, the center has started off mother plant selection, initiation, multiplication, rooting and acclimatization of potato, banana, sugar beet and sugar cane plants.

Tissue culture involves the use of small pieces of plant tissue (explants) which are cultured in a nutrient medium under sterile conditions. Using the appropriate growing conditions for each explant type, plants can be induced to rapidly produce new shoots, and, with the addition of suitable hormones new roots. These plantlets can also be divided, usually at the shoot stage, to produce large numbers of new plantlets. The new plants can then be placed in soil and grown in the normal manner.

Tissue culture is used to produce large amounts of plants in a very short time compared to conventional propagation methods, establish and maintain virus free stock and maintain varieties of plants for research and development

Currently, the center produces a thousand seedlings a day and can potentially produce 5 thousand seedlings a day if the center is fully equipped with required materials as the tissue culture officer Abebe Worku stated.

The magnificent activities of ORDA shall further keep its momentum in fulfilling equipments such as, better moisture sterilizer/autoclave/, air cooler conditioner (AC) to each recommended crop types and green house. Moreover, it’s indicated to harvest mother plants in the surrounding instead of wasting time to other places for finding explants.