The R&D’s ultimate focus is improving wood properties to support more sustainable and efficient timber production. The Company is involved in cultivating seedlings that give higher yield and better wood properties and are more resilient to the impact of disturbances such as disease and pests.
Gain Green Development does not use any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in any stage of its production and research programs and initiatives or in any areas where research occurs under the Company’s direct or indirect responsibility.
For research and development activities, the Company collaborates with different international and national universities and research institutes. These collaborations are of primary significance as they offer new ideas and raising awareness of emerging technologies for both the academic staff and graduate students.
Gain Green Development R&D department (Lab) gathered a group of researchers with PhD, Master Degree, and Bachelor Degree in Biotechnology and Agrotechnology. They formed the task teams to solve different research problems and accomplish the following missions:
• to conduct the new culture initiation
• to develop the technology and establish the Standard Operating Procedure (“SOP”)
• to improve the new introduced and existing plant species in lab.
Improvement of Planting Medium
- Inoculation of the helpful microbes into the planting medium
- Adding “charging” biochar into the planting medium
- Utilizing bio-pesticides
In Gain Green Development, the plant tissue culture platform is used for seedlings mass propagation and derivative of other technologies. The micropropagation is always initiated with the surface sterilization process of the selected sample explants. Once the clean culture is successfully sterilized, it becomes the stock explants, which continues to multiply in the production line.
During the initiation of clean culture, surface sterilization may not be easy to perform. Sometimes it is not as effective as expected, especially because the contamination may happen in the clean culture a few months later. This phenomenon occurs due to certain plant samples containing microbes inside the vascular system, which are difficult to be eliminated during the sterilization process. This issue can be solved by culture media supplements with antimicrobial reagents, but they are costly and there is a possibility of side-effects in case of long-term use.
Paulownia is originally a temperate to subtropical climate plant species. Adaptation of temperate species in tropical climate zone is always a great challenge for plant growth and survival. The Paulownia plantlets are not much like most tropical plant species, which have waxy cuticle on leaf surface, lesser stomata under a leaf, smaller leaves, and other features necessary to adapt to the hot tropical climate. On the contrary, Paulownia has wide leaves without a waxy cuticle and very little trichomes on leaves for protection when it is a plantlet.
Gain Green Development applies a stepwise acclimatization process to enhance the survivability of the plantlets in the nursery. For plant adaptation to the external environment, the temperature, lighting, and humidity of the acclimatization zone are monitored in different degrees along with the growth of deflasked plantlets. The plantlets are delivered to the plantation for planting after four weeks period of the acclimatization process.