The Hon. Minister for Agriculture also announced that the Tissue Culture Laboratory located in Bethesda will officially open in the coming week.

The new facility will support agricultural development by producing disease-free, high-quality plant material for farmers and agricultural programmes across Antigua and Barbuda.

Plant tissue culture laboratories utilize modern biotechnology techniques to grow plants from small samples of plant tissue under sterile laboratory conditions.

This process allows scientists to rapidly produce large numbers of genetically identical and healthy plants. The technology is widely used to propagate crops such as bananas, pineapples, root crops, ornamentals, and other economically important plants while minimizing the spread of plant diseases.

The Bethesda facility is expected to help increase crop production, improve plant quality, strengthen food security, and support the resilience of the local agricultural sector.

Cabinet welcomed the update and noted that the laboratory will play an important role in modernizing agriculture and providing farmers with improved planting materials to enhance productivity.