IBBC member Date Palm Developments (D.P.D. Ltd.) has been authorised by Iraq’s Council of Ministers to supply the Government of Iraq with over 20,000 tissue-cultured date palm plants as part of the National Program for Date Palm Rehabilitation and Propagation in Iraq for 2024. DPD is a leading agritech company specializing in tissue culture propagation, ensuring the production of disease-free, high-quality, and productive date palm trees. While Glastonbury, England, is famous for its renowned festival, it is also home to DPD, which exports premium young  date palm plants to the Middle East, contributing to the region’s agricultural sustainability and growth.

DPD expertise is based on the culturing of elite varieties of Date Palms through tissue culture technology, and source the very best cultivars of Date palm, propagating in specialist laboratories and undergoing primary hardening in DPD’s state of the art greenhouses. Once ready plants are shipped by temperature-controlled air freight to their destination, for secondary hardening prior to planting in the field.

Joanne Bayley, DPD  Director says ‘We are delighted to be working with the Government of Iraq and to be sharing our scientific expertise to help repopulate Iraq’s famous date palmeries with our highly productive  and superior trees, and playing a role in the verification of Iraq’s date palm varieties is an honor. This is a relationship we expect to see developing over the long term’

Christophe Michels, MD IBBC ‘it’s rewarding to see a UK Agritech company supporting Iraqi agriculture at the cutting edge tissue culture technology, and we are especially pleased to have introduced the Iraqi agriculture minister to DPD as he attended our Agritech committee last year. DPD are a scientifically exceptional company with whom we are pleased to be supporting as they in turn support Iraq.’