Improved Seeds
Quality Protein Maize

Tree Crops
Mango
Avocado
Citrus
Bamboo
Grafting

Vegetable & Tuber Crops
Tissue Culture
and Minisetting

Economic Gains

Nutritional Benefits

Agricultural Education

Protection of the Environment

Tissue Culture
The tissue culture laboratory is used to produce healthy banana plantlets from selected commercial varieties for distribution to farmers using material selected from international and local sources. The program is working on reproducing commercial varieties of both cooking and eating bananas which are resistant to the Black Sigatoka. This deadly fungal disease, which has decimated production in many Caribbean, Central and South American countries, has been recently identified in the northwest of Haiti. Although banana represent an important source of revenue and nutrition to the rural population, production levels have steadily declined over the past decade. The plant material has degenerated in quality and has become infested with nematodes and diseases. Trials have shown that improved, disease-free plants from the lab generate approximately twice the revenue of traditional materials.

Tissue culture is the most rapid method of propagation of valuable disease-free material.

Minisetting
Minisetting is a rapid propagation techniques which is used to quickly and inexpensively produce plant material, whether it is banana plantlets or germinated seeds for yam production. Bananas produced in the laboratory can be subsequently rapidly multiplied using minisetting to make healthy plantlets available to farmers on a commercially significant scale.

Yams being prepared for minisetting	Production of the popular Musqué banana variety .	Deliveries of thousands of banana plantlets