ISABELA CITY, Basilan Nov 16 (PIA) – The Philippine Coconut Authority together with the coconut farmers have pushed for the revival of the coconut industry in the province after cocolisap wreaks havoc in 2014 and infested majority of coconut trees in Basilan.
In a recently concluded stakeholders’ forum, PCA BARMM-Basilan, Diosdado A. Espinosa Jr, Acting Division Chief and Ms. Onie Hayawan, Senior Agriculturist presented the current status of Coconut Industry in Basilan.
According to their report there were 8,902,236 coconut trees in Basilan and 6,218,397 of them or 69.85% were infested by cocolisap. With this, PCA has gone through different treatment interventions in order to lessen the infestation. This include pruning of coconut trees in 2014 -2017 with the total of 3,931,508 (63.22%), truck injection on 2015 – 2016 to 3,385,591 (54.44%) coconut trees and cutting of extremely infested coconut trees on 2014-2019 with the total of 393,156 (6.32%). There were also 1,424,444 coconut trees released with Bio-con Agents.
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