New tissue culture lab to help boost food production

The building of a new $60 million tissue culture laboratory is to begin shortly, with Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir predicting the lab will help boost crop production.

As the Estimates debate began on the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security, Weir revealed that the new facility will become a critical arm of the island’s agricultural capacity and improve yield prospects.

“This tissue culture lab will give us all the clean planting material that we are going to need to make sure that we can help our farmers, and bring back the yields in production that we are accustomed to,” he said. “This will be a lab, where we can have enough planting material to satisfy our Barbadian farmers, and then equally look at how we can work with our brothers and sisters within CARICOM to provide any assistance for them as well.”

He added: “At this tissue culture lab, we are going to have, for the first time in Barbados, a seed bank. It basically means that, God forbid, if we were to be struck by a storm or hurricane and crops are destroyed to the extent that we have to get back out there and replant, that seed bank gives us the opportunity to move with nimbleness, to be able to assist our farmers.”      

Acting Chief Agriculture Officer Michael James also indicated that the lab would provide new planting material to help fight off pests and diseases that have wreaked havoc on several crops.

“Over the years, we have had a problem with our sweet potato,” James told the lawmakers. “There is a virus disease, and it is a disease that is only in Barbados. But what they have found internationally, it makes no sense trying to spray to get rid of this disease. So, internationally, what people do is that every year and a half – every two years, depending on your yields – you would replace that planting material by using clean planting material.

“We are also going to be importing different cultivars of material, especially out of the International Potato Centre in Peru, which is basically the area where most people go to get their sweet potatoes in terms of planting materials, and we will be looking at different varieties. One way of controlling pests and diseases is not to plant one type of sweet potato, so you plant different varieties. Those varieties that have tolerance to particular pests, you plant them with other varieties, and that reduces the pest load.”

The first phase of the lab will cost $42.7 million and the second will be $18 million. The lab will also be the home of the Barbados Innovation Centre for Agriculture (BICA) to introduce young people to new farming technologies, including robotics in crop cultivation and other areas.

Wayne Barker, projects director in the ministry, gave a breakdown of the construction phases.

“The first phase of the project for the entire facility will see the construction of the tissue culture lab and seed bank, the administration and BICA building, the entrance gazebo, site works, the infrastructure and parking, the electrical building and water retention pond. This first phase is estimated to take nine months. The second phase, if it can run immediately after the first phase, will take four months.” (SB)