Nightwatch actively participates in the elimination of viruses found in plants

Nightwatch actively participates in the elimination of viruses and other pathogens that can occur in plants. By assisting in improving the quality of the harvest in Ecuador and supplying powerful young plants, they help enlarge the volume of the harvest.

Nightwatch has initiated a plant tissue culture project in cooperation with R&S Tissue Cultures. This is a Dutch organisation that focuses on creating virus and pathogen-free baby plants under sterile conditions. They research the mother lines of our Ecuadorian Ilex Guayusa plants and reciprocate a stronger version that is virus and pathogen free. Tissue culture labs in Ecuador will multiply these healthy stocks in order to supply healthy young plant material to the Quichua tribes that farm our Guayusa plants. 

By supplying Quichua communities with clean and healthy starting materials for growing guayusa, harvests will increase and so production levels will rise without encroaching on the forest. This last bit is quite important to us as communities often burn down an area to reuse the ground. We naturally don’t want that to happen because of the environmental impact it would have, but also because it would set back the production of the Quichua communities. By enabling them to work with healthy and virus free plants they can profit more from the harvests without encroaching on the forest.