With over twenty years of experience in tissue culture, we are one of the leading plant biotech companies in North Africa. Our work revolves around providing optimum conditions for farmers, ranging from the provision of healthy stocks through tissue culture to the enhancement of the rhizoshpere through the use of mycorrhizal symbionts and other beneficial micro-organisms. We also provide assistance with alternative cropping techniques, such as hydroponics and aeroponics, as well as the production of niche crops like raspberry and mushrooms. Several research and technical documents are also freely available from Crop Development; we hope that they will serve as a valuable information resource for our customers and partners.
Mission statement
Organisms exist as open systems, constantly exchanging matter and energy with their environment. This creates an interaction between all the members of an ecosystem; such an interaction forms the basis of a dependence, creating a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to life. Life - all life - improves a system's capacity to sustain life.
Traditional approaches fail to appreciate the value of this framework. Plant care is viewed as a problem to solve rather than as a process, part of a vital, flowing system. Such approaches are inherently unstable and effective only in the short term; they require extensive maintenance and continuous input of raw materials.
At The Farm, our approach is based on creating a self-sustaining system. We believe in providing the plant with a complete environment: micro-organisms to provide nutrients, perform soil chemistry and maintain the rhizosphere; flora to anchor the soil, increase humidity and provide shade and organic matter; fauna to aerate the soil, mechanically break down detritus and pollinate flowering plants. A careful understanding of the relationships and interdependencies allows us to integrate the various lifecycles into overall water and nutrient cycles. Once a critical threshold is reached, these cycles begin to feed back on themselves, maintaining and producing coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity: an ecosystem.
Crop Development is the website of The Farm, an agribusiness located near Rabat, Morocco. The tissue culture lab at The Farm primarily produces banana plants, although we also produce Paulownia and potato seed in commercial quantities. In addition, we have done work with a variety of other plants, ranging from ornamentals to woody trees; we maintain in vitro stocks of several of these, including deffenbachia, croton, spathyphyllum, ginger, and stevia. We have also established a program for the in vitro production of date palm and are capable of producing commercial quantities on demand.
The Farm is also actively researching bioenergy alternatives. Our work is focused around two promising plants, Jatropha curcas and Ricinus communis (castor), which grow well on marginal land and can be used for biodiesel production. By bringing marginal land into cultivation and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, these bioenergy alternatives offer the hope of alleviating major social and environmental problems. This novel and exciting field is a major research focus at The Farm which we expect will generate several new products and services in the coming years.