Pili now rated as a high-value crop

PILI, Camarines Sur – Pili, Bicol’s flagship commodity, is now recognized as a national top priority high-value crop.

Attesting to this is the core planning team (CPT) of the national fruit Research, Development, and Extension (RDE) network organized by the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR).

Pili joins the ranks of mango, durian, lanzones, rambutan, banana, papaya, and citrus which are considered priority and high-impact fruit crops.

Pili’s inclusion as a subnetwork of the national fruit CPT was formalized during a meeting in Naga city in June last year.

During the meeting, Dr. Fe Devinagracia-Laysa, DA regional executive director for Bicol (Region 5), was designated as team leader of the Pili subnetwork.

It was during the conference that Dr. Laysa and Dr., Estela Orolfo, project leader, presented the Pili Research, Development, and Extension agenda for the period 2000-2004. The program is an inter-agency undertaking with DA as the lead implementing agency.

The core planning team of the national fruit network is composed of experts to various disciplines from different research and academic institutions and from the government and private sectors.

The significant headway achieved by Pili as a food and cash crop with a great export potential can be attributed considerably to the Pili Development Project in the Bicol Region (PDPBR) started in October 1993 and completed in September 1998.

And last year, DA allocated P5 million more to support the Pili program in the region for three more years.

The five-year pili project was coordinated by the Los Baños-based Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Reosurces Research and Development (DOST-PCARRD).

Involved were DA-Region 5, DOST-Region 5, Bicol University College of Agriculture and Forestry (BUCAP), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)-Region 5, and University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB).

The project aimed primarily "to provide an effective system to organize, integrate, develop, and coordinate all ongoing projects on pili for development, utilization, management, and conservation of the crop."

Much of the credit for the project’s success goes to Dr. Laysa, whose personalized leadership and coordination of the PDPBR resulted in the identification and selection of three outstanding pili cultivars (named M. Orolfo, Magnaye, and Laysa), which were the first varieties named by the National Seed Industry Council (NSIC, formerly Philippine Seed Board or PSB).

With this breakthrough, the project has collected as much elite selections from the field and developed clonal nurseries as sources of scion for multiplication of more female seedlings.

Before the projects, only 97,920 of Bicol’s 410,161 pili trees were bearing fruits.

The project has established 11 nurseries where some 1.17 million seedlings and about 30,000 asexually propagated plants were produced. Or these plant materials, about 610,000 were distributed by 2,844 beneficiaries, thus increasing the pili population in the region by 934 percent assuming that 80 percent of those distributed survived.

Thirteen clonal orchards and 277 technology demonstration farms on pili-based cropping systems have been established.

But foremost of the project’s accomplishments is the creation of awareness on pili’s potential value to the economy of the Bicol region, in particular, and to the country, in general.

Bicol accounts for 76 percent of the total area planted to pili in the country. Moreover, the Philippines still enjoys a monopoly of the foreign market for processed pili products.

Dr. Laysa’s exemplary leadership of the project, among other things, has earned for her the prestigious "Pantas" (Sage) award, the highest conferred by PCARRD on a research administrator whose achievements have contributed immensely to agricultural development in the country.

Pili, pointed out PCARRD, is one of the fruit trees indigenous to the Philippines that has a great potential for development as a major export crop.

While the tree has been introduced to other countries, it is only in the Philippines where the nut is produced and processed in commercial quantity. The Philippines still enjoys a monopoly of the foreign market for processed pili products. With the proposed reduction of tariff rates under the General Agrement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the pili nut and its processed products can have greater access in the export market.

There are potential processing and utilization possibilities of pili nuts as food, feeds, industrial uses, fuel, and handicrafts from every part of the pili tree.

The kernel, which is about 11 percent of the whole fresh fruit by weight, is made into various confectionery and baked products as well as ice cream flavoring.

The oil from the pulp is rich in oleic glyceride and linolic glyceride which can be used for soap making, perfumery, and other cosmetic products and preparations.

Because of its aromatic smell, the pili wood is also a good material for wood carving and ornament making.

Moreover, pili trees provide good shade for other crops such as abaca, coffee, and cacao. Their evergreen characteristics and symmetrical branching make them good foundation trees for highways and parks.

Most farmers and traders sell pili in unshelled or depulped from in sacks. Some sell in raw and kernel forms.

Large volume of fresh nuts is sold directly to middlemen who in turn sell the produce to processors. Harvest season begins in May and ends in September.