SL Agritech offers discount for rice seeds

MANILA, Philippines - Hybrid rice seeds producer SL Agritech Corp. is offering farmers in key rice producing regions a discount on seed purchases during the rainy season.

The company yesterday announced that farmers would be given a discount of  P300 per purchase of five kilograms. This corresponds to savings of P1,200 for 20 kilograms.

Covered by the discount are Ilocos, Bulacan, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan.

The company said these provinces have the potential to increase production by one metric tons per hectare through the use of hybrid seeds during the rainy season compared to using inbred rice seeds.

“They say hybrid rice is not good for the wet season. But farmers that continue to use SL-8H during the wet season harvest higher than inbred,” said SL Agritech chairman Henry Lim Bon Liong.

Farmers have been veering away from the use of hybrid rice seeds in the wet season because of bacterial leaf blight (BLB) which can wipe out an entire harvest.

The disease manifests as brown spots on the leaves of rice plants.

SL Agritech, however, is recommending a specific cultivation protocol for the wet season.

This includes better land preparation and removal of weeds to prevent pestilence; transplanting of the seedlings 18 to 21 days from seeding; water draining through clean drainage pipes as flooding prevents simultaneous growth of plants; reduction in nitrogen fertilizer by using only 80 to 115 kilos per hectare as nitrogen causes leaf overgrowth and weak plants; and proper use of bactericide-fungicide.

Pangasinan and Ilocos provinces are both ideal sites for hybrid rice rainy season planting because the land remains dry and well-drained despite the rains, according to Dr. Frisco Malabanan, SL Agritech hybrid rice specialist.

Dr. Malabanan considers Pangasinan as a good cultivation area during the wet season.

SL Agritech is continously developing technologies to help farmers keep a high yield in the wet season.

It is optimistic about obtaining a certification with the National Seed Industry Council for its new BLB-resistant variety, SL-18 which can yield 11.75 MT per hectare against the average yield of 3.5 MT per hectare when inbred variety is used.

Its other popular variety SL-8H is already BLB-tolerant, but SL-18 has been developed to have stronger control against BLB and is considered a BLB-resistant variety.

This variety is going through National Cooperative Testing (NCT).

Having finished two croppings of field test – the wet season of 2012 and the current dry harvest – it expects to receive certification from the NSIC by next year.