(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
Sanaullah Ataullah
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The Peninsula
Doha, Qatar: To improve local date production in quality and quantity, the Agricultural Research Department at the Ministry of Municipality has produced 28,000 seedlings of high-quality palm trees using the tissue culture technique.
The Ministry offered some palm tree seedlings for sale at nominal prices to individuals and farms through its website, said a top official.
The project aims to meet the market need and farmers' desire to provide tissue cultured palm seedlings with good genetic qualities and high productivity, and of distinctive varieties.
“We produced nearly 28,000 seedlings of palm trees of different popular verities like Khanizi, Shishi and Barhi,” said Director of the Agricultural Research Department Hamad Saket Al Shammari.
Speaking to Qatar TV recently, he said that the Department plans to produce 100,000 seedlings of palm trees to cover all farms and individuals in the country.
“The seedlings are being provided at a subsidised price of QR85 per seedling. This price is not for profit or competition in the local market, but rather for support and encouragement,” said Al Shammari.
He said that citizens and farms can benefit from the offer at the rate of 20 seedlings per citizen and 100 to 200 seedlings for farms according to the calcification of the farm.
“We are making it easy for citizens and farmers to obtain these seedlings. The citizen or farm owner can apply through the Ministry's website, and it is a very easy and simple process,” said Al Shammari.
“In the process of tissue culture palm propagation, we focused on some varieties with good specifications, whether in vegetative growth or root growth, so that they can resist these pests and diseases,” said Al Shammari.
Speaking about the plan of the Department, he said:“Now we are working on a project at Rawdat Al Faras Date Palm Research Station to build a field gene bank for date palms in Qatar.
“Under the project about 600 palm trees of different types have been collected whether from inside or outside Qatar including the most popular and highly demanded verity 'Majhol'.”
He said that the idea behind the gene bank for date palms is to preserve this origin from any natural disaster or exposure of the palm to any pest that could destroy it.
“We preserve the seed nucleus itself in our gene banks in the Agricultural Research Department where almost all the varieties available in Qatar are preserved,” said Al Shammari.
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