Tissue Culture Innovations for Coffee Plantlet Production

Strategies to improve coffee plantlet production in vitro has been revolutionized by the Ecom Industrial Laboratory in Nicaragua in collaboration with the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD). A million plantlets were produced in 2007 through tissue culture innovations using the Rita®-type  bioreactors. The embryos are immersed in a nutrient solution for a few minutes a day up to a very advanced stage of germination. These then were tranferred to a newly developed horticultural substrate in the field. The direct transfer of plantlets to the field reduced the production costs, bypassing germination and plantlet growth in vitro.

Currently, there are 3500 bioreactors producing 250,000 pregerminated embryos a month which can be acclimatized directly to nursery conditions through weaning tunnels and acclimatization procedures. More than 70% of the germinated embryos grow into plants a few weeks after sowing. Further studies are being conducted on how to synchronize embryo development in bioreactors and on guaranteeing that the regenerated in vitro plantlets are genetically true-to-type. The laboratory workers are now aiming to produce 2.4 million plantlets in 2008.

For details of the press release, see: http://www.cirad.fr/en/actualite/communique.php?id=855