Agriculture Business Week

What started as a craving for mushroom 11 years ago has become a thriving agribusines of a 61-year-old mechanical engineer and his family today.

It may be odd, but that was how Jack Nagano of Barangay Mallorca in San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija started to become a mushroom, producer and processor. It started in 1996 when he was craving for mushroom which he, unfortunately, was not able to buy since he could not find someone selling some in his town.

Knowing that his favorite food has many health benefits, he was bothered why there was hardly one interested in cultivating and marketing mushrooms. Then he thought asking his neighbors - where he could buy mushroom spawns for he was already planning to grow mushrooms for himself.

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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under SPOTlight. Tags: Mushroom. Comments: None

To prevent the coconut leaf beetle (Bronstispa longissima), or CLB, from spreading in the visayas, the National Coconut Research Center-Visayas (NCRC) based in Visayas State University (USU) is conducting studies to identify effective but least hazardous pesticides and viable biological control agents.

Tasked by the Department of Agriculture and the PCA-8 to conduct studies on CLB, the NCRC believes that in order to contain the pest immediately, pesticides should be applied in farms where infestations are severe. But Dr. Bimbo T. Mandras, VSU entomologist and NCRCV affiliate scientist for pest control, suggested that only pesticides with shorter residual toxic effect should be used.

This is because pesticides are costly, harmful for the environment and human health, and its application would affect the coconut farmers economically because they would be prohibited to harvest coconuts from pesticide-treated trees for six months.

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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Other Crops. Tags: Brontispa, Coconut, Disease, Pest. Comments: None

Many farmers in Cotabato City are getting interested in growing raelines, or rainfed advanced elite rice lines, and it’s not surprising to know why.

First of all, these eight crosses between PSB Rc14 and Matatag lines are moderate non-shattering, have good grain quality, and are drought-tolerant.

Guialuson Datumanong of Datu Shariff in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Cotabato City who has been planting raelines since 2006, shares that despite of drought and saline problems, he has harvested 110 55-kilogram sacks per hectare from Raeline 3 or PR 33382-25-1-1B-B.

Like Datumanong, thirty-four-year-old Dennis Aguha is also very pleased with the performance of raclines for he has harvested more than 50 sacks at 42 to 45 kg per hectare despite of drought.
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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Rice. Tags: Rice. Comments: None

Growing herbs for culinary, aroma therapeutic and medicinal purposes is becoming increasingly popular in the Philippines. Some of them are utilized as freshly harvested leaves while others are dried for future use.

Here are some useful pointers on harvesting, drying and storing these useful herbs. It is from the pamphlet of Aubin’s Village from Rockhampton, Australia. Herbs have to be harvested correctly, otherwise they will lose their value. Harvest the plants on a dry day. Don’t harvest them if the dew has not disappeared.

Pick the herbs and place them into a flat box or baskets to avoid crushing or bruising. Don’t gather more than what can be dealt with at a particular time because they do not retain their fragrance for long periods.

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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Agri Tips, Herbal Plants. Tags: Herbal Plants, Herbs. Comments: None

fter successfully fertilizing water buffalo oocytes, or not fully developed eggs, into embryos, livestock biotechnology researchers of the Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) have found that several factors influence meiotic competence and developmental potential of the oocytes.

Meiotic competence is the capability of the oocyte to mature under incubator or in vitro condition so that it can be successfully fertilized, while development potential is the capability of the oocyte to develop into a blastocyst or an embryo that is ready for transfer to recipient animals.

The study was conducted by Danilda H. Duran, Dr. Peregrino G. Duran, Dr. Eufrocina P. Atabay, Dr. Edwin C. Atabay and Dr. Libertado C. Cruz with the collaboration of Japanese biotechnologists Dr. Y. Takahashi and Dr. Y. Kanai at the PCC Satellite Embryo Biotechnology Laboratory in India and at the PCC headquarter in Nueva Ecija.

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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Livestock. Tags: Carabao, Water Buffalo. Comments: None

Various strategies have been identified by experts from the academe and the feed industry to reduce or prevent the adverse effects of mycotoxins on animal health and production. So far the most practical method is the inclusion of mvcotoxin adsorbents in feed. When an effective mycotoxin adsorbent is added to .feed, it adsorbs mycotoxins in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and they are safely excreted in feces, thereby preventing absorption and transport to target organs. The net effect is a reduction in the dose of absorbable toxin to a concentration that does not adversely affect animal performance.

Although mineral binders are relatively low priced in the market, they offer very limited protection against mycotoxins for several reasons:
• Some clay binders are processed, while others are crude inorganic preparations (e.g. zeolites and bentonites). The efficacy of such products is variable or inconsistent.
• Mineral mycotoxin binders, such as hydrated sodium aluminosilicates (HSCAS), are capable of binding only one specific mycotoxin (most commonly aflatoxin). Such products are not, therefore, effective against mycotoxins of varying molecular weight and polarity. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that clay binders are not effective against T-2 toxin, ochratoxins, DON, cyclopiazonic acid, zearalenone, diacetoxyyscirpenol, fumonisins and ergotamine.
• Clay binders offer low specificity and so must be used at a high level of inclusion (5 kg/metric ton of feed) to be effective.

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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Livestock, Special Report. Tags: Disease, Mycotoxin. Comments: None

A Magsaysay Awardee in India is showing how rural families can become more productive with his Biovillage project by promoting doable livelihood projects for poor families with limited resources. While the production technologies are simple enough and very doable by ordinary rural families, the high-tech technology of the Internet is used to disseminate useful information super fast.

The awardee is Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, a scientist (geneticist) who is considered the father of India’s Green Revolution. He spearheaded the production of improved varieties of wheat which enabled the farmers to triple their harvest. He also served as the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Bahos in the 1980s.

His Biovillage project is located in Pondicherry in southern India. Pondicherry is a former French colony which the colonizers left in 1954. While the seaside colony is progressive, it has its share of a lot of poor people in the rural areas. We were one of those who visited the Biovillage project after the annual Magsaysay Awardees’ meeting in Chennai, the former Madras, in the southern part of the subcontinent.
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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Special Report. Comments: None

The abattoir of Alaminos City, known as Don Leopoldo Alcedo. Slaughterhouse, has been chosen as the country’s Best Meat Establishment for 2007 during the celebration of Meat Safety Consciousness Week.

The Alaminos City abattoir was the only city-owned slaughterhouse that was included in the elite group of “AA” abattoirs throughout the Philippines. The award was based on compliance to the rules and requirements set by a national inter-agency committee. Under the “AA” accredited local government unit slaughterhouse category, Alaminos City won over Imus, Cavite; Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon; and Moncada, Tarlac.

In a related development, Alaminos City was also recently bagged for the third time the Good ‘Manufacturing Practice accreditation from the National Meat Inspection Service in the Ilocos.

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Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Livestock. Tags: Meat. Comments: None

All feeds - raw materials or finished products - are suitable media for growth of a wide variety of molds, provided temperature and moisture conditions are favorable.

Molds, or amag in Filipino, are fungi distinguished by the formation of mycelium, a network of filament or threads, or by spore masses.

More than 100 kinds of molds which grow on standing crops or in feeds are known to produce toxins (mycotoxins), and about 20 of these mycotoxins have been associated with diseases in animals or humans:

In recent years, nutritionists have been giving increasing attention to the effects of fungal infestation of feeds. It has been demonstrated that many nutritional problems in the past - for example, suspected nutrient deficiencies were in fact, caused by feeds contaminated with fungi.

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Posted on November 29th, 2008 under Farming, Plant. Tags: Disease, Mold, Plants. Comments: None