Orchid farmer rejects SRC services

Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer

ST MARY orchid farmer Lloyd Pringle was politely firm in his rejection of an offer by the Scientific Research Council (SRC) for him to re-engage its services with a view to having them propagate seedlings so vital to his business.

"No, because now I have found somewhere (the Philippines) that is growing it and I don't have to put the money up front. Until that doesn't work anymore, that is where we will be staying," Pringle told The Gleaner on Monday.

Last Thursday, outgoing executive director of the SRC, Dr Audia Barnett, in an interview at her Hope Road Gardens office, had this to say: "Oh yes, I am planning to give him a quick call and engage him because I think there is still work that we could do for him. There are services that we could offer and we also want to let him know that we are willing to sit down and talk, see how we can help on an ongoing basis."

However, up to when The Gleaner made contact by telephone, the SRC had not been in touch with Mr Pringle. Barnett, who demits office today, had requested an urgent interview to give the council the opportunity to respond to a story published in The Gleaner on Tuesday, September 21, in which the businessman took issue with the extensive and expensive proposal from the SRC. Declaring that it did not make sense to pay for all the research and have to buy back orchid seedlings from the SRC, Pringle said he opted to source seedlings from far afield as the Philippines instead of going the local route. Barnett believes he was misguided since the SRC's proposal is standard practice in such cases.

Declaring that the SRC has the in-house competence in tissue culture - the technology used worldwide to produce clean planting material, she explained that it is a time-consuming process, given the tedious nature of the research required and, therefore, expensive.

"We would have had to do some amount of trials, so we presented to the client steps that we would have to undertake to satisfy his request. However, I think where the breakdown took place is that the client didn't get back to us," Barnett told The Gleaner.

Concerns

"This request was about two years ago and so we are a little bit surprised that two years later we are understanding that the client had some concerns. We cannot be compared with Thailand that has been growing that particular orchid or the Philippines that might have been growing that orchid for centuries," she added.

Pringle had looked into the possibility of sourcing local planting material after the main wholesaler in Hawaii went out of business. Following his disaffection with the SRC, he has since managed to source a very prolific Hawaiian-Thai orchid seedlings from the Philippines.