The Head of the Laboratory of Micropropagation of Plants of the Center for Advanced Science and Technology Development of the V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University Lavr Krukov reported that the Crimean Federal University (CFU) started to implement a project, connected with growing of exotic fruits. According to him, the major modern task is to conduct an inventory of exotic crop plants with regard to the industrial perspective.
“Our goal is to produce a sufficient number of planting materials, which will be in demand on the market. In the other words, it means that scientists will have to develop planting materials for selling it on the shelves, but not for satisfying their own scientific preferences. We have to produce required amounts of seedlings and adapt them to the conditions of the Crimean region”, — Lavr Krukov told.
He clarified that the matter concerns such fruits as persimmons, figs, jujube, olive, feijoa, as well as pawpaw and actinidia.
“For example, we have got an operational guideline to grow apples, but we don’t have instruction manuals for growing of actinidia. Therefore, the university’s task is to develop this protocol to encourage business companies to come, buy and reproduce those planting materials at their own manufacturing capacities”, — Krukov stressed.
The First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Crimea Denis Kratyuk added that only easy to store and transport fruits must be chosen for growing on an industrial scale.
“The main problem lies in a fact that it’s difficult to implement such agriculture projects and transport ultimate products. For instance, figs are almost non-transportable. There are various berries, which we could offer to mainland Russia. In this connection, blackberries become very interesting and perspective products regard to economy, though there are also non-transportable varieties of blackberries. Otherwise speaking, it’s a very huge amount of work, requiring a scientific assistance too”, -First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Crimea noticed.
Reference: KIA
