PT Monfori to make fast-growing trees

JAKARTA (JP): PT Monfori Nusantara, a joint venture of U.S. firm Monsanto and Australia's ForBio Limited, will start producing genetically engineered tree seedlings next year to supply the country's industrial forest plantations.

Monsanto's market development manager Lewi Pohar Cuaca said yesterday his company would start growing fast-growing trees next January at its Parung, West Java, factory.

"We will call our products elite trees, because they will contain a mix of superior genes," Lewi said.

Using DNA genetic mapping, the company would locate genes with good characteristics in one tree, and combine them with genes from other trees, he said.

The elite trees would grow twice as fast as regular species, and produce twice as much, he said.

"The mean annual increment rate of elite trees will be 50 cubic meters per hectare a year, compared to normal trees which is between 23 to 27 cubic meters per hectare a year.

By the time the trees are five years old, their diameters would be twice as big as regular trees and they would be one and a half times as tall, he said.

He said the company would produce pulp tree seedlings like eucalyptus and acacias, as well as timber like teakwood, rubber, and meranti.

The wood will be processed in its 5,000 square-meter factory site in Parung. The site would have a 1,400 square-meter factory and 1,000 square meters of nursery display buildings, he said.

Lewi said the company would mass propagate elite tree seedlings using robots in the factory.

The trees will be cloned by tissue culturing, giving them the same characteristics as the parent plant, he said.

"We will have four robots at our factory, which could produce 12 million seedlings a year. The seedlings could supply 12,000 hectares of industrial forest plantation," he said.

Each of the Australian made machines cost US$400,000, he said.

He said prices of the seedlings would be 10 times more expensive than conventionally bred seedlings.

"But the growing period is cut as is the space needed to plant the trees by a half," he said, "therefore it will also cut operation costs and increase the outputs," he said.

Lewi said his company's products were now being tested by five industrial forest plantation companies in South and East Kalimantan and Pekanbaru (Sumatra).

Each of the companies had planted 10,000 elite trees on a 1,000 square meters of their estates, he said.

Monfori was cooperating with state-owned PT Inhutani II in South Kalimantan, in breeding elite Acacia trees, he said.

Lewi said his company would genetically engineer the seedlings by next year.

"We have the technology now, but we will not start until next year," he said. (das)