Determining and Minimizing Production Costs

Abstract

Little information has been published on determining costs in operating a plant tissue culture laboratory, and more specifically on individual costs for a given crop. Anderson et al. (1) provided useful information on costs of tissue-cultured plants of one crop several years ago. Since then few documents have been published. This is understandable since commercial laboratories are often unwilling to discuss information on their specific costs for a particular crop. Partly this may be because their records are incomplete and they cannot determine the exact costs. I would encourage the research community to consider costs and cost accounting when conducting research on new crops. Although many of the research results are interesting from an academic standpoint, they are not of much benefit to the commercial laboratories if the technology cannot be applied economically.