Tissue Culture

In spite of the substantial progress achieved in the past in Sugarcane Cultivation, these crops still do not serve us optimally because our needs and rural, economic and political environment keep changing. These crop plants regularly suffer from yield and quality due to environmental stress of flooding, drought, heat, salinity and alkalinity. They also suffer from pests and diseases. Often yields are sustainable only with high inputs of artificial fertilizer, fungicides, herbicides and insecticides which are now being considered undesirable due to their perceived effort on environment and human health. Improvements in all these vital characters are the challenges to scientists. Question is can stability be brought about in high levels of productivity?

In order to harvest a good crop one has to start out by sowing good seed. Problems of cane cultivation starts from here.

Vegetative propagation by seed setts, vulnerability to more than 108 diseases, ratooning and lack of disease elimination procedures, running down of varieties, long replacement time for varieties aggravates problems further.

Realizing the importance of healthy, vigorous and clean seed for rich harvest, Parry has been focusing its efforts to develop clean planting material integrating biotechnological tools and agronomic practices. In our R&D centre at Bangalore, through the last 12 years of intensive research, scientists have mastered the art of producing clean planting material of sugarcane specially suited to tropical conditions.

A State-of-art tissue culture production facility located at Pugalur has a capacity to produce 2 million plantlets per annum. Each plantlet is a genetic copy of its parent possessing same varietal characteristics but free from diseases. These plantlets are transplanted to nursery cane farmers land and Parry's extension staff monitor the crop throughout the growing season, harvest and delivery to ensure the quality. Today tissue culture has become an integral part of our nursery management, ensuring predictability of farming.

Besides sugarcane, we also use tissue culture technology to produce disease free varieties of banana. 

Today Parry's Research and production team not only offer products of wide range of Indian crop plants but also share its rich experience and expertise to other companies of interest by contract research, consultancy and turnkey projects. Consultany includes the following:

• Technical feasibility studies.

• Laboratory design and commissioning of Tissue culture facility.

• Staff training