Location: 1943 St Hwy 30,
Te Teko, WHAKATANE

QUARANTINE FACILITY

The quarantine facility is a restricted movement area in which imported plant tissue cultures can be held, monitored and propagated throughout the duration of their set quarantine period. The duration of the quarantine period is determined by MAF depending on the origin of the tissue culture material and the perceived risk to New Zealand’s biosecurity.  

During the quarantine period, all plants are carefully monitored for contaminants and/or disease. Anything suspicious is reported to MAF who advise whether further diagnosis is required or if the material should be destroyed.

These facilities are used internally to complement our breeding programme and offered to external customers for a variety of species.

The three sterile micropropagation laboratories utilise both somatic embryogenesis and organogenesis to micropropagate a variety of species. The facilities include
sterile laboratories with 20+ laminar flow hoods
4 controlled environment incubators for growing subcultured plantlets
automated media production for up to 350L of media at a time
8 cryopreservation tanks and associated equipment for long term storage of embryogenic tissue

The primary function of the molecular services laboratory is verification of transgenic tissue. This is done by first determining the presence of the gene, the copy number and then it’s expression. The team in the laboratory uses a variety of tools including
Southern blot analysis
real time PCR
conventional PCR
to determine successful integration of a gene of interest.