The table below shows the cost, in pounds, of transporting one van load of fruit tree seedlings from each of three greenhouses A, B and C to three garden centres S, T and U. It also shows the stock held at each greenhouse and the amount required at each garden centre.

a. Formulate this transportation problem as a linear programming model.

b. Use the north-west corner method to determine an initial basic feasible solution to this transportation problem and the cost of this solution.

c. Optimize the solution in (a) further to obtain the minimum cost solution using the U-V method.

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