A complex for growing planting material with a closed root system, financed by a loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), will be solemnly opened today at the Glubokoye Experimental Forestry Enterprise, the press service of the Ministry of Forestry informed BELTA.
A complex for growing planting material with a closed root system, financed by a loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), will be solemnly opened today at the Glubokoye Experimental Forestry Enterprise, the press service of the Ministry of Forestry informed BELTA.
The new greenhouse complex will specialise in growing European spruce planting material with a closed root system. Its design capacity is 2.4 million seedlings per year. In the future, the annual productivity of the complex may increase to 3.2 million, which will allow meeting the demand for planting material of improved quality ("forest of the future") in domestic and foreign markets.
It is planned that the opening ceremony will be attended by the Minister of Forestry, Vitaly Drozhzha, representatives of the general contractor, the World Bank, and local authorities.
The construction of the facility was carried out on the territory of the existing permanent forest nursery. The complex consists of a production building, which will house a sowing workshop, a cassette storage facility, and sanitary and domestic premises, as well as 7 greenhouses with automated irrigation, ventilation, and heating systems, and 8 growing-out fields equipped with ramp irrigation systems. The new facility also includes cold storage rooms for planting material, a substrate storage facility, a water treatment station, a storage pond, and two artesian wells.
An agreement on a loan for the "Development of the Forest Sector of the Republic of Belarus" project was signed between the Government of Belarus, represented by the Ministry of Forestry, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in April 2015. The IBRD provided a loan amounting to $40.714 million. These funds were invested in the construction of modern forest seed centres for growing planting material with a closed root system, and the procurement of necessary machinery and equipment. In the spring of 2018, the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank, having reviewed the progress of the project implementation, decided to allocate an additional loan of 12 million euros.
Over 90 forestry institutions of the country are participating in the project "Development of the Forest Sector of the Republic of Belarus". The first seed complex for growing planting material with a closed root system was opened in April of the current year at the Ivacevichi forestry enterprise in the Brest region.