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Farmers in developing countries yield more biotech crops in 2012

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Published: 15 May 2013

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Developing countries in 2012 marked a biotechnology milestone in global agricultural history when farmers in said countries, including the Philippines, produced more biotech crops than their counterparts from highly developed and more technologically advanced nations.

Dr. Randy A. Hautea, global coordinator and Southeast Asia Center director of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), announced this amazing news during the international conference on the “Adoption of Biotech Crops in the Developing World” held recently at the Hyatt Hotel Manila. The conference was co-organized by the National Academy of Science and Technology, an advisory body of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-NAST).

Dr. Hautea termed the milestone development as a “crossover” from economically developed nations to the developing world, allowing farmers in Asia and other less developed nations to reap the benefits of biotech crop cultivation: less use of pesticides, safer farming practices, reduced costs, better crop yield, and higher income, with more extra time spent for other activities.

Biotechnology is the process of creating or modifying a product or process through the use of living systems, organisms, or their derivatives, to render the product or process more useful for medical, agricultural, and nutritional applications, among others.

“The potential of biotechnology to increase agricultural productivity is one of the reasons why we at the DOST believe it is a cause worth pursuing,” said DOST Secretary Mario G. Montejo, corroborating the gains offered by biotechnology. Moreover, the DOST supports a science-based method of evaluating both the benefits and risks of GM crops, he clarified.

The conference mainly presented key findings of the research project by the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) titled “Adoption and Uptake Pathways of GM/Biotech Crops by Small-scale Resource Poor Asian Farmers in China, India, and the Philippines.”

China and India have been identified as frontrunners in the biotech crop arena in Asia. In fact, 98 percent of biotech crop adopters, or those who have embraced biotechnology in farming, in the developing regions, are from China, India, and the Philippines. Globally, there are 17.8 million farmers from 28 countries who are into biotech crop cultivation. Of this number, 85 percent are from the three countries, with China and India having 7.2 million biotech crop farmers each and the Philippines accounting for .375 million.



Biotechnology: Philippine scenario
According to the study, biotechnology in agriculture reached farming communities in the Philippines by way of seed suppliers and seed company technicians who introduced local farmers to the mechanics and benefits of biotech crop farming.

Now, the Philippines has a total of 370,000 small farmers growing more than 750,000 hectares of genetically modified corn called the Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt corn. The first Asian country to approve a Bt crop for commercial cultivation as both food and feed, the Philipines is also the first ASEAN nation to initiate a regulatory system for biotechnology via the National Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines established in 1990.

As the Philippines’ central hub for science and technology (S&T), DOST fully supports biotechnology-driven projects, systems, and infrastructure in the country. Last January 2013, Dr. Amelia P. Guevara, DOST undersecretary for research and development, led the inauguration of a biotech pilot plant at the University of the Philippines Los Baños Complex in Laguna—the only biotech facility to cater to researchers, members of the academe, as well as start-up entrepreneurs. The project is funded by the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development, a DOST sectoral council.

Bt cotton in India, China
Seed companies likewise played a key role in introducing Bt cotton technology in China during the late 1990s. The Institute of Cotton Research under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences boosted their efforts by educating local workers and agricultural traders to introduce Bt cotton to the farmers. In 2012, 7.2 million farmers in the country planted 4 million hectares of Bt cotton.

In India, large-scale farm demonstrations helped propagate the technology and popularity of Bt cotton. Last year, farmers in India planted 10.8 million hectares of Bt cotton.

The said conference aimed to help formulate policy recommendations on biotechnology including biosafety regulatory systems. Among the attendees were scientists, researchers, farmers and other workers from the agricultural sector, policymakers, and members of the media. DOST-NAST co-organized the international conference with the John Templeton Foundation, ISAAA, SEARCA, and the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II.

DOST-TRC offers cool summer business ideas via seminars

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Published: 07 May 2013

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This summer, get a taste of refreshing business ideas that can be profitable all year round at the Department of Science and Technology’s Technology Resource Center (DOST-TRC) with its training courses for aspiring entrepreneurs.

With the summer vacation now on its final stretch this May, it isn’t too late to put up a small business perfect for beating the heat.

One such business is ice cream production. For a minimal training fee, one can enroll in TRC’s two-day training on commercial ice cream production to learn about the basic technology, material and equipment requirements, product formulation, and costing. Trainees will also get the chance to have a hands-on experience in ice cream making and a field trip to an ice cream plant.

One can also opt to put up a buko juice/shake kiosk TRC’s two-day training includes lectures on plain and flavored buko juice product formulation, processing guidelines, sanitation procedures, packaging and cost requirements. As in the ice cream production training seminar, enrollees will similarly have a hands-on experience in the preparation of buko shake/juice.

TRC also offers livelihood trainings for other business enterprises perfect for the whole year . These include food business, services, agriculture and other small-scale industries that cater to the varied interests of aspiring entrepreneurs.

Providing affordable livelihood trainings is just one of TRC’s ways of creating opportunities for the public. “We expect to create not just more livelihood opportunities for more individuals; we also look forward to developing better and more relevant programs, efficiently and with higher success rate,” says Dennis Cunanan, TRC director general.

The TRC office is located at Jacinta Bldg. 2, Guadalupe Nuevo, EDSA, Makati City. For more details on the schedule and fees please contact 8225087, or visit trc.dost.gov.ph or like its facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/trc.dost. ###

DOST-ITDI standardizes wine starter to improve tapuy quality

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Published: 07 May 2013

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Tapuy, a local rice wine very popular in the Cordillera Province may soon sit side-by-side with Japanese sake, Malaysian tapai, Chinese chao chingchu, and the likes in international wine cellars. This international market prospect is made clearer by researchers at the Department of Science and Technology’s Industrial Technology Development Institute (DOST-ITDI) who found the key to better quality tapuy by improving the process of producing the starter.

The exquisite taste of tapuy oozes from bubod , a wine starter that can consistently produce quality tapuy with improved yield and appealing taste. Tapuy is prepared by fermenting glutinous rice using bubod. After fermentation, the glutinous rice becomes soft, with liquid forming on top of the mixture. This liquid is tapuy, known for its acidic but sweet alcoholic flavor and a pleasant aroma.

The secret behind making good tapuy is good quality bubod. As part of DOST-ITDI’s continuing quest to help improve the competitiveness of the local industries, ITDI-based experts finally standardized the process of making good quality bubod.   Traditionally, bubod comes in the form of flattened and rounded balls of various sizes and are compact and dry.   According to Michelle Evaristo, Science Research Specialist II at ITDI’s Food Processing Division and also the project leader, the improved bubod is made from powdered NFA rice and cassava flour, both cheaper than the traditionally used glutinous rice.

The researchers mix pure cultures of the mold called Rhizopus oryzae and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to the rice-flour. Then they add water, form it into dough, granulate the mixture, and then incubate it to allow the growth of organisms.

The dough is oven-dried until the moisture content dips to 9-12 percent. The mold produces enzymes that will break down the starch into simple sugars, which will then be used by the yeast to produce alcohol.

“What makes this newly improved bubod different from the traditional one is that it is now granular in form, allowing more surface area for faster drying, as well as making organisms grow better,“ Evaristo emphasized. Hence, incubation takes only overnight instead of the traditional 48 hours. Growth of more beneficial organisms is also achieved using the granular form resulting to a pure culture that gives better quality wine. “All in all, this developed bubod has good microbial quality and is quicker to prepare,” she said. The bubod also increased rice wine yield with higher alcohol content.

In terms of shelf life, she said that the bubod can last up to 12 months and still be capable of producing good quality rice wine.

“And with the improved bubod’s good performance, starting this month, we are working on standardizing the whole process of rice wine production and we are now conducting upscale trial production and further evaluation,” she told.

This innovation has also solved a lot of problems encountered by tapuy producers, such as short shelf life, low yield, higher production cost, adulteration, inconsistency in the quality of bubod, and packaging-related problems, she added.

DOST-CAR (Cordillera Autonomous Region) with ITCI are currently poised for a dry run in preparation for the eventual commercialization of the technology. (Del-Delica Gotis, April 18, 2013)