9X left the city to return to the countryside to open a nursery laboratory
Dong ThapManaging a laboratory in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Phuong Hang, 30, returns home to borrow money from family and friends to open a laboratory and grow seedlings.
Born in the rural district of Lap Vo, as a young man, Hang had many opportunities to interact with the seeds his parents planted, transported by boat and sold throughout the region. In 2014, he graduated with a degree in biotechnology from Nong Lam University, Ho Chi Minh City, and was recruited into the tissue culture laboratory in Dong Nai.
From an employee, after one year he was promoted to manager, with a salary of more than 10 million dong. At the end of 2019, he packed up and returned to Dong Thap with the aim of continuing the family business of producing seeds. “Back then it was a trend to leave the city and go back to the countryside, but before deciding, you should know what is in your hand, how to face challenges, not because you get bored with the city and then quit,” Hang shared.
Nguyen Phuong Hang performs tissue culture procedures in the laboratory. Photo: Ngoc Tai
Returning to the Dong Thap girl’s house is 5 years of experience, nearly 100 million dong. He borrowed more family and friends to open a 20 square meter tissue culture laboratory. By utilizing his parents’ home, the cost of his tissue culture room was reduced by half, around 200 million VND.
Tissue culture technique is a method of maintaining and culturing plant organs under sterile and nutrient-rich conditions. Tissue transplant varieties are selected from trees of high economic value, overcoming the disadvantages of extraction, grafting, cuttings…
After the laboratory was built, Hang chose banana trees for research because the market was in need, and also wanted to help farmers in rural areas have a source of quality seeds. According to him, bananas grown traditionally separated from the mother plant are susceptible to fungal infections, yellowing leaves and tuber rot, low yields, severe plant death.
Initially, he went to Dong Nai to look for good seed sources such as ripe bananas, siamese bananas, and tall bananas. To get quality, disease-free tissue, it must leave when the sun is still fresh, and the plants that have not yet flowered are not too small. After digging up the banana tubers, he brought them back to Dong Thap and disinfected them with Javen solution, distilled water and then took them to the breeding laboratory.
According to 9X scholar, banana propagation is easier than other plants, the success rate is more than 80% after 6 months of cultivation in the laboratory. He succeeded in the first culture, but his research time was also a lot, had to borrow money. He managed to make money to maintain the experiment by transferring the technique to some farmers who grew forest trees and traded some seeds.
“Coming home to pursue a career is 10 times more extreme than when I left for work, but I’m happy because I achieved some of the results as expected,” he said.
The Hang mutant banana variety is being researched and bred. Photo: Ngoc Tai
After a year of building a laboratory, completing the breeding process, in early 2021, Hang received many orders from the Eastern province. In April 2021, he had just delivered 90,000 banana seedlings and raised 180 million VND when Covid-19 hit. The laboratory had to reduce its capacity due to a shortage of workers. The seed market was still for sale, but most of it was sold out to eliminate capital.
In mid-March this year, after the outbreak was gradually brought under control, the small yard in front of Hang’s house was filled with tissue culture seeds. Apart from bananas, he also received orders to produce ornamental flowers, several mutant varieties. He also researched the typical Lap Vo taro varieties, several ornamental flowers of the Sa Dec flower village with the desire to create good characteristics, produce seeds of uniform quality and in large quantities.
Annually, Hang laboratory supplies to the market an average of 200,000 tissue culture plants, with a profit of about 100 million VND. His initial tissue transplant project won the third prize in the Mekong Delta province and region.
Master Luong Nguyen Duy Thong, Vice Chairman of Dong Thap Vietnam Youth Union, judge for the startup competition, commented that Hang is an aspirational contestant. If the laboratory is successful in tissue propagation of Western specialties such as mango and mandarin, it will contribute to the local agricultural industry, which lacks sources of quality seeds.
Ngoc Tai
at Blogtuan.info – Source: vnexpress.net – Read the original article here
