Vetiver and mass production, second update

As promised here goes the third update regarding the

in vitro (Tissue Culture) of vetiver plants.

For the benefit of who hasn't followed the ongoing study

so far, here is a quick resume:

One of the most formidable obstacles to the spreading of the

Vetiver System, is not so much the price of the live material

used to bring to safety the territory, which is higly competitive

with other solutions (rigid structures) but more the high cost

of the skilled and non skilled workers needed to physically

plant the hedgerows and the availability of the material itself.

Say for example the energetic application: biofuels and

thermic power generation: if we imagine an hectare of plants

we will have to think to 100m rows by 200 rows, 50 cm space

between them 30 cm between plants: that makes a single

row 20 Km long formed by almost 67000 single plants.

If a single person can plant daily 1500 common nursery plants,

the need for workers goes up to 44 days/man/Ha.

The costs of this option are NOT SUSTAINABLE.

Furthermore, the average nursery plant does not have a

standard dimension and it is very difficult to mechanize

its planting.

This are the reasons that convinced me to find a professional

partner to produce high numbers of standard plants

suitable to mechanization to cut labour costs to a tenth

and reduce considerably the cost of the live material itself.

And here are the results so far obtained:

the head researcher of the production lab has confirmed that

the in vitro growth proceeds with a surprising rithm and

in little time we will be able to transfer a first lot of live

material in the greenhouse to harden: probably within July

a first consignment of 100 - 200 plants will be transferred in

Sardinia to be devised in the field. At this point it will be easy

to follow the growing speed and to document it.

More to follow.