What we do and offer:
Our main purpose is to propose Opuntia and related genera cultivation for biomass production. We pursue this aim through the supply of cactus plantlets of the most suitable varieties.
Our plantlets are obtained exclusively from in vitro culture and this is mainly to avoid pest and diseases spread, and also for matching the high amount of propagation material needed for intensive plantations.
Currently we are cooperating with Catania University Agricultural Department, Italy (Prof. Stefano La Malfa) and Jose C. B. Dubeux. Jr. Assistant Professor – Forage and Grazing Management University of Florida – IFAS doing research for different aspects of Opuntia and related species exploitation, and many others.
Using seeds, leads up to 50% of polyembryonic Opuntia seeds. From those you will obtain hybrids with widely varying properties. dryGrow Foundation uses a Micropropagation technique with Bioreactors and liquid substrates. This is a technique of clonal propagation. The plants are produced through the cultivation of explants (organs, tissues or cells) in specific artificial substrates maintaining sterile conditions with light and temperature in daily cycles.
This technique has advantages compared to the traditional propagation techniques:
-a considerable reduction of time and space required
-the possibility of obtaining a large number of plants starting from a few explants
-the production of individuals all identical to each other and to the parent plant
This leads that our plantlets are pest free and clean and never had contact with soil. As they are coming from Micropropagation, we have much less problems to obtain export/import permissions to distribute to the semi-arid areas Worldwide. Local nurseries will then multiply the plants without spreading local regional pests nation or continent wide. Thereby the transportation efficiency is radically improved.
This allows subsistence as well industrial farming for animal feed and biomass production for energy and pharmaceutical industry.
We can develop protocols for in vitro multiplication of indigenous Opuntia and Nopales species. This enables you to clean the adapted local varieties for further in vivo multiplication.
Our main focus in the last years was to gain access to resistant varieties to cochineal. Currently we have one Opuntia variety and one Nopales variety in our micropropagation production. The Opuntia type is actually the known most resistant one to cochineal.
The multiplication potential of our plants is actually 1:40 in four months starting with controlled in vivo and/or in greenhouse multiplication in your country. (10’000 plantlets leads to about 400’000 small plants for your in field plantation, ones they have reached 20 cm of height).
Provide you with consultance on our widespread knowledge on Opuntia and Nopales plantation techniques.
We have worldwide connections to institutes who can analize cactus cladodes on nutritional values for optimal animal feeding.
We can provide you with solutions of the needed additional components for feeding animals with cactus cladodes.
Since two months our varietys are out for field testing and local multiplication in Ethiopia Mozambique and Uganda. We will have the results at your disposal in 6 to 8 months.
We have ongoing field test with CNR (Centro Nazionale Ricerche) in Italy.
Thereby the quantity of Biogas produced with local Opuntia Ficus Indica species will be determined.
The big water content of the cladodes makes logistics the determining factor of farm layout.
We accompany worldwide harvesting and grasing techniques.
