YANGJU — The Yangju Agricultural Technology Center said on Sept. 14 that it has supplied 5,000 high-quality virus-free strawberry seedlings produced through tissue culture to seedling growers in the city. The center said the program is intended to raise both yields and quality at local farms while lifting their self-sufficiency in seedlings and reducing dependence on outside suppliers.
Strawberries are propagated vegetatively through stems and leaves, meaning a viral infection can pass pests and diseases on to the next generation, cutting productivity and degrading quality. Tissue-culture seedlings, grown and multiplied from extracted growing points, sharply reduce infection rates and are regarded as a core technology for building a foundation for high-quality seedling production on farms.
Yangju is currently the only city or county agricultural technology center in Gyeonggi Province that produces strawberry tissue-culture seedlings on its own. The center cultivates growing points at a scientific farming facility, then reliably multiplies and distributes high-quality foundation seedlings at a smart nursery equipped with an ICT-based integrated environment control system, water-cooled heat pumps and other advanced equipment.
Farms use the foundation seedlings they receive to build their own multiplication systems through the mother-plant and distribution-seedling stages. As a result, strawberry growers in Yangju have held their seedling self-sufficiency rate firmly at around 64%, sharply reducing their reliance on outside supply.
"The key variable determining profitability in strawberry farming is securing strong, high-quality seedlings," said Ji In-hwan, head of the Yangju Agricultural Technology Center. "We will continue to expand investment in tissue-culture technology and production facilities so that local farms can receive high-quality seedlings without disruption."
