DA Promotes Palay Breeder Seeds from PhilRice

PILI, Camarines Sur, April 5  -- The Department of Agriculture (DA) is promoting among rice farmers in Bicol the use of technologies developed by its Bicol Experiment Station (BEST) and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) that are seen as effective tools toward increased production and income.

"We have been propagating breeder seeds provided by the PhilRice which we are selling to farmers who wanted to attain a 10 percent increase in their palay yield," said Edgar Madrid, DA's regional technical director for Research and Development (R&D) during recent a customized PalayCheck field day at the BEST demonstration field in Barangay Pawili here.

Over 300 farmers from major rice-producing towns in the region joined this latest BEST field tour that featured demonstration of the drum seeding technology, modified dapog, minus-one-element technique and the carbonized rice hull.

Drum seeding is a technology developed by the PhilRice that uses a lightweight and hand-pulled machine for easy and efficient dispensing of rice seeds into the field, Madrid said.

Modified dapog is a mat nursery raising technique that produces easy to transplant seedlings in less irrigated fields for hybrid rice varieties while the minus-one element technique (MOET) or biological method also developed by PhilRice is a practical and cheap method of soil testing and assessing farmers field of nutrient deficiency.

This technique is performed by the farmer himself or by farm technician in the field to determine the nutrient deficiency or requirement of his crop, Madrid said.

Carbonized rice hull (CHR) on the other hand is a soil conditioner and bioorganic fertilizer from hydrophilic material made from the incomplete or partial burning of rice hull. It contains potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and other microelements needed for growing crops.

As soil conditioner, CRH replenishes air and retains water in the soil. Because of the heat it undergoes, it is sterile and thus, free from pathogens. As such, it makes an excellent host for beneficial microorganisms, and an ingredient for bioorganic fertilizer, the DA R&D chief said.

The PalayCheck field day also called location specific technology is a regular activity being initiated by the DA at its BEST demo fields here and in the municipalities of Ocampo, Libmanan, Nabua, Pamplona and Calabanga in Camarines Sur and Camalig, Oas and Ligao in Albay province.

Urging the farmers to continue using certified seeds suitable to their place and adopt technologies which they think are suitable in their farms, PhilRice Los Baños branch manager Diego Ramos who was present in the tour said such activity would encourage farmers to adopt technologies as they could see for themselves the result.

He added that PhilRice is scaling up PalayCheck and palayaman technology by making them more location-specific or customized to the farmer's field through a location-specific technology development program.

Palayamanan is an intensive rice-based farming system that provides farmers varied strategies in farming through education while experimenting on the modern application of the integrated crop management.

It is also aimed at training farmers become farmer-scientists, farmer-researchers and extensionists in advocating new farming technologies, an approach that according to a report by PhilRice resulted to an increased production and income for them.

Palayamanan primarily aimed at maximizing resources in the farm to alleviate poverty and produce more rice for the increasing population is in support to the national rice-sufficiency program of the government, Ramos said.

DA acting Regional Executive Director for Bicol Marilyn Sta. Catalina during the PalayCheck tour stressed on the importance of having field days as this is an opportunity for the DA to share with the farmers the technologies at hand.

She said DA is continuously working on ways to improve technologies for dissemination to farmers as she recognized the efforts of the research group for coming up with technologies to lessen cost of production but increase yield and income.

"The farmers should adopt the technologies as the government invested on these technologies and once there is an investment there should be a return on investment by increasing the yield and income of the end-user of the technology- the farmers," Sta. Catalina said.

The DA Bicol acting chief also expressed optimism that once farmers adopt the technologies, the vision of rice sufficiency is not far from reality.

"We are continuously implementing the Fertilizer, Irrigation, Extension, Loans, Dryers and Seeds (FIELDS) program which is important to attain self-sufficiency in rice," she added as she asked the PhilRice for a continued collaboration in the implementation of projects and urged the farmers to produce more rice for self-sufficiency. (PNA)