R&D programs propel sugar industry

The local sugar industry, now a vibrant component of the similarly robust agriculture sector, continues to benefit from scientific headways.

Consider:

• The Philippines is now an active participant in the Sugarcane Variety Improvement in Southeast Asia and the Pacific for Enhanced and Sustainable Productivity project.

• About 1,000 sugarcane accessions are now being maintained at the germplasm bank of the Philippine Sugar Research Institute Foundation Inc. (Philsurin) in Victorias City, Negros Occidental.

• A global positioning system (CPS) has been adopted to enable the sugar sector to track farms’ geographic characteristics and map farm management techniques.

Now a "sunshine" industry after R&D breakthroughs extricated it from the doldrums where it was a few decades back, the sugar industry continues to benefit from programs and new technologies generated by the research sector.

As of this writing, 50 improved sugarcane varieties have been exchanged among Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines under the Sugarcane Variety Improvement in Southeast Asia and the Pacific project funded by the United Nations-Common Fund for Commodities.

The project aims to increase productivity and help ensure long-term competitiveness of sugarcane in South East Asia through the development, dissemination, and adoption of high-yielding, pest-resistant, and ecologically adapted sugarcane varieties.

The exchanged varieties can either be used as breeding materials or released as new varieties after a thorough field evaluation.

"In addition to varieties from Australia, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, France, India, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, and the United States, we have a new collection from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand," said Philsurin director general Leon Arceo.

Philsurin also now maintains in its germplasm bank about 1,000 sugarcane accessions gathered from local and foreign sources.

"A wider collection means a wider source of material that may be used to produce high-yielding sugarcane varieties," he pointed out. Philsurin’s massive dispersal of HYVs is the major factor that shored up sugarcane productivity over the past few years.

Arceo further reported that GPS, also called global information system (GIS), has enabled the institute to come up with a map of Negros, which produces more than half of the country’s sugar.

He expected the GPS undertaking to totally cover the country by the end of 2005. "From it we can identify where the cane is planted, sugarcane variety, and soil fertility." – RAF