CM praises Food Processing & Horticulture dept for successful tissue culture

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee praised the activities of the tissue culture laboratory of the Food Processing and Horticulture (FPI&H) department at Ayeshpur in Nadia for distribution of over 26 lakh banana saplings produced at the laboratory among beneficiaries in different states in the financial year 2023-24. There is a demand for tissue culture of 30 lakh banana plants annually and the cost is over Rs 15 per sapling.

West Bengal State Food Processing and Horticulture Development Corporation Ltd (WBSFPHDCL) had signed an agreement with an Odisha-based company in February 2023 for operationalising its sole tissue culture laboratory that was lying in a derelict condition since its establishment in 2009-10 because of lack of technical expertise.Sources said the company that took up the responsibility of making the tissue culture laboratory functional proved its expertise and its Odisha unit is one of the largest in eastern India. Plant tissue culture is a collection of techniques used to maintain or grow plant cells, tissues or organs under sterile conditions on a nutrient culture medium of known communication. It is widely used to produce clones of a plant. The applications of tissue culture are mainly for commercial production of plants used as potting, landscape and florist subjects which uses meristem and shoot culture to produce large numbers of identical individuals. Saplings produced by tissue culture are disease resistant and the waste percentage is negligible.

In Bengal, tissue culture is widely used in banana cultivation and the Horticulture department did this in private laboratories. “The laboratory has cut down dependency on private laboratories and WBSFPHDCL has saved Rs 90 lakh and earned a royalty of Rs 50 lakh in 2023-24 fiscal,” a senior official of state FPI& H department said. The distribution of saplings for the fiscal 2024-25 will start from July.