The Dominican Republic has begun to ship banana plants to Grenada this week as part of a contract for half a million seedlings produced by the in-vitro process. The first eight thousand units went to the island nation of Grenada this week. The plants were produced at the Vitroplantas del Caribe laboratories, according to Homero Gonzalez Duluc. Gonzalez said that over the next couple of weeks a total of 50,000 plants would be shipped in the first phase of the contract. This is the first time that the Dominican Republic exports banana seedlings and this represents a new source of hard currency as well as the logical substitution of imports from Central America. The seedlings are consigned to the Ministry of Agriculture at St. Georges, Grenada, and will be used to restock the island’s banana plantations.