D.P.D. Ltd (Date Palm Developments) is the market leader for production of Date Palm plants by tissue culture. Pioneers in the field, DPD has nearly 40 years’ experience in the production of high quality, disease-free, true-to-type micro-propagated Date Palm plants. We produce the highest quality Date Palms available on the market today, and have so far supplied over 3 million plants to 40 countries all across the Date growing world. Production takes place in our high technology, state of the art laboratories and greenhouses near Glastonbury, in Somerset, U.K.
We carry out rigorous screening using the latest biotechnology methods to check for all possible disease-causing agents at the UK Government’s Central Science Laboratories (FERA) in York. All of our production clones are DNA fingerprinted to certify the variety using the latest PCR-based AFLP technique at Eurofins Scientific Analytics, world leading independent laboratory and testing service in France. Variety is confirmed by comparison against externally verified records of each individual fingerprint with that obtained from a known reference tree of proven variety and known location, as well as our own large AFLP-based DNA-fingerprint database of varieties and clones.
Each part of our production process from raw chemical to final plant is accurately recorded and governed by our standard operating procedures with regard to quality, reproducibility and traceability. All plants are fully traceable throughout the laboratory and greenhouse production stages. This gives us the essential mechanism for control, monitoring and management of the production process.
We can arrange worldwide delivery by air-freight, with all shipments being accompanied by full shipping documentation. Prior to despatch all plants are carefully prepared and inspected by the UK’s plant health authorities for a UK Phytosanitary Certificate, confirming their disease-free status and ensuring compliance with individual countries importing regulations.
We are able to offer year-round availability of a range of elite varieties, and have an established history of supplying to a wide range of customers, including Nurseries, Distributors, FAO programmes, various Ministry of Agriculture and individual projects DPD is part of the Atul group of companies.
For more information, visit www.date-palm.co.uk