The last column lamented the misdirected efforts of a clueless bureaucrat in the Department of Agriculture (DA) to abort a decades-long research to develop abaca varieties resistant to the dreaded bunchy-top virus. This disease wiped out abaca plantations in Laguna, Batangas, Quezon and Davao in the 1920s. To date the disease continues to ravage abaca farms in Bicol and Eastern Visayas but finally we are close to providing relief to our poor embattled abaca farmers.
The last column lamented the misdirected efforts of a clueless bureaucrat in the Department of Agriculture (DA) to abort a decades-long research to develop abaca varieties resistant to the dreaded bunchy-top virus. This disease wiped out abaca plantations in Laguna, Batangas, Quezon and Davao in the 1920s. To date the disease continues to ravage abaca farms in Bicol and Eastern Visayas but finally we are close to providing relief to our poor embattled abaca farmers.
The PCAARD DOST-funded research which is being challenged is a multi-location trial in nine sites intended to confirm the adaptation and virus disease resistance of the new varieties under different agro-ecological conditions, beyond the UP Los Baos conditions where they were originally bred.
Likewise, being told to desist is a semi-commercial planting of ten hectares in Leyte in a demonstration conducted jointly by Specialty Paper Manufacturing Inc. and Visayas State University to establish the technical and economic feasibility of the new varieties for paper and pulp processing.
See full article at Manila Bulletin
