Tissue culture (micropropagation) grows uniform young plants from small pieces of a mother plant in a sterile laboratory. Sri Lanka has commercial tissue-culture laboratories that export plantlets of ornamental and foliage plants to nurseries abroad, which wean them and grow them on.

Why buyers use tissue-culture plantlets

• Uniform plants of the same variety
• Grown in sterile conditions
• Shipped in sealed containers on agar gel, not soil, which suits countries that bar soil and most growing media, including the United States

What to include in your request

• Species and varieties, or the plant you want propagated
• Stage: in vitro in containers, or deflasked
• Quantity and delivery schedule
• Destination airport and your import permit details

Lab capacity is planned ahead, so larger orders are scheduled. We confirm species availability, stage, lead time and freight with the quote.

Orchids: all orchids are listed under CITES. Orchid seedlings in sealed flasks are generally exempt from CITES permits, but we confirm the documents for your country before quoting orchids.

Importing into your country

Every shipment travels with a phytosanitary certificate from Sri Lanka’s National Plant Quarantine Service. What else you need depends on where the plants are going. Send us your species list and destination and we check the rules before we quote.

• European Union: all plants for planting need a phytosanitary certificate, including small lots and parcels. Some genera are on the EU high-risk plants list and cannot be imported until they are assessed, so we check each species first. Any growing medium must be new or treated and declared on the certificate, and professional importers register with their national plant-health authority.
• United Kingdom: plants for planting need a phytosanitary certificate, pre-notification on IPAFFS and inspection at a border control post, where fees apply.
• United States: the importer needs an APHIS import permit (form PPQ 587, free, applied for online; allow 30 to 60 days). Plants arrive bare-root, without soil, and enter through a port with a USDA plant inspection station.
• United Arab Emirates and the Gulf: the importer usually needs an import permit from the national ministry before the plants are shipped (in the UAE, the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment).
• Japan, Canada and other markets: a phytosanitary certificate is required, and some plants also need an import permit or inspection on arrival. We confirm before quoting.
• Australia and New Zealand: very strict. Most live plants need an import permit and post-entry quarantine, so we quote these case by case.

How to get a price: tell us the species, quantity, size and destination airport. We quote FOB Colombo, CFR or CIF by air, with lead time and minimum order, and arrange samples before an order.