Vietnamese private labs coming into their own

Dr Nguyen Thi Chinh, a leading researcher in mushroom cultivation and fibrous tissue production, has a laboratory in her own house.

Equipped with all kind of machines – grinder, blender, dryer, packaging machine, as well as fermenting pots and scaffolds, Chinh said the private laboratory helps facilitate her research process.

Alongside the Government’s million-dollar support to public laboratories at institutions and universities over the last decade, private and foreign enterprises have also been working to develop their own research establishments.

These private laboratories have come to play an important role in scientists’ research and development process and serve practical production purposes. A number of established scientists have claimed that they would not have achieved certain successes if it had not been for state-of-the-art research equipment and facilities provided by these laboratories.

Not only have scientists been taking advantage of private laboratories, farmers in different localities have also caught up with the trend. One example is farmers in Da Lạt City in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, who’ve produced sunflower, carnation, potato and banana seeds using tissue culture in their own laboratories.

The province has about 50 tissue culture laboratories that produce an average of 30 million vegetable and flower seeds per year for production and high-tech research, said Nguyen Van Son, director of the province’s agricultural department. Most of them are privately-owned, he added.

Read more at VietNamNet

Publication date: Mon 4 Sep 2017