New publication on rubber off the press

MANILA, Philippines - A “Technoguide on Diseases of Rubber and their Management” is off the press.

The volume was written by Dr. Noemi G. Tangonan, head of the Plant Pathology Research Laboratory of the University of Southern Mindanao-Crops Research Division (USM-CRD) in Kabacan, North Cotabato, together with USM’s Jasmin Pecho and Elaine Genovive Butardo.

A multi-awarded scientist, Dr. Tangonan is a fellow of the UP Los Baños-based Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization-Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEAMEO SEARCA).

Government-hosted SEARCA, headed by Director Gil C. Saguiguit Jr., is one of the 19 “centers of excellence” of SEAMEO, an intergovernment treaty organization founded in 1965 to foster cooperation among Southeast Asian nations in the fields of education, science, and culture.

The book-type technoguide was published by the University of Southern Mindanao Agriculture Research Center (USMARC) with funding support from the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR).

Dr. Eugenio Alcala, executive director of the Philippine Rubber Board Inc. (PRBI)), welcomed the publication of the technoguide as “a timely effort in providing rubber smallholders or planters of the latest approaches combine with the fundamental principles or essential to better understanding of disease management.”

Dr. Alcala, also a SEARCA fellow, said Dr. Tangonan and her group have made a “monumental contribution” in helping the growth and development of the Philippine rubber industry.”

Rubber tree was introduced in the Philippines as early as the 1900s. But it was only in the 1950s that local private corporations started establishing rubber processing plants in Mindanao.

Cotabato is one of the country’s major rubber-producing provinces today.

Rubber is at present one of DA’s top five priority commodities. Aside from generating employment in rural areas and planting rubber in idle hillylands and uplands, rubber cultivation enhances environmental rehabilitation, being an excellent plant species in the sequestration of carbon dioxide in the air.                        –Rudy A. Fernandez