§ Sir J. Rodgersasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a report on the research that is being conducted by the East Mailing Research Station on new techniques for the mass production of coconuts.
§ Mr. WoodI have been asked to reply.
The research being carried out at East Mailing Research Station is part of a programme financed by my Department, on behalf of developing countries, to propagate improved coconut material by vegetative reproduction; tissue culture techniques are done in a controlled environment laboratory. At East Mailing the work is on reproduction from the root tissues, and at Wye College on reproduction from the inflorescence tissues. The research is being carried out in collaboration with the Coconut Industry Board in Jamaica, which also supplies the coconut material for East Mailing and Wye College. The whole programme is likely to cost about £80,000 over six years, of which the East Mailing share may be about £21,000.
The work at East Mailing is particularly important because the potential for improvement of tropical tree crops—by selection, breeding, and multiplication by vegetative means—is very great. Improved genotypes have already been produced for rubber, cocoa, tea and coffee. In the case of coconuts, as with dates and oil palms, clonal propagation is impossible without the new techniques now being investigated. Production of coconut hybrids is a recent development, but the use of these on a large scale would be expensive and would need skilled techniques. Stabilisation of a "fixed hybrid" which can be propagated by seed, while retaining the desirable characters, would need countless generations of selection within the hybrid population.
The technique of tissue culture could well provide a means of vegetative propagation, and consequently a rapid means of breeding and seed production.
212WThe research at East Mailing is now in the second half of the six-year period. Progress so far has enabled tissue to be removed from near the tips of coconut roots and living callus to be produced and grown in culture.
The purpose of the present work is to determine the best environmental and nutritive conditions to bring about the differentiation of this callus and growth into small plants a few millimetres in size for subsequent production of mature palms.
If and when the technique is perfected in Britain, the small plants will be transferred to Jamaica for field testing. If this is successful the technique will be available for use by all coconut-growing countries.
The grant from my Department enables East Mailing Research Station to employ two scientists and covers their ancillary costs, the air freighting of material from Jamaica, and the purchase of essential capital equipment.