Agriculture Business Week

One of the new crops the farmers in Ilocos Norte are producing is dragon fruit or pitaya, the fruit of cacti that are native to Central and South America. These cacti are now also cultivated in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Taiwan.

In the town of Burgos, Ilocos Norte, which is known for its centuries-old lighthouse, there is a 5-hectare (ha) farm where 3 ha are being developed for the production of dragon fruit.

Husband and wife Rodolfo and Edita Dacuycuy own this farm located at the foot of the historic lighthouse. Although they started planting dragon fruit only on November 12, 2006, they have already harvested 120 kg of fruits from their farm and 80 kg from their backyard in Pasuquin, the town before Burgos.

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Posted on November 18th, 2008 under Fruits. Tags: Dragon Fruit. Comments: None

The future of this exotic tropical fruit does not seem to be bright. Why is this so?

Lance is an American from Hawaii who is married to a Filipina. The couple is blessed with three two daughters and one son. When his wife was pregnant with their second child, she craved for lanzones but Lance didn’t know what it was so he bought her a lychee. She complained that it was not the kind of fruit she wanted.

Last year, the family finally visited the Philippines. While in the country, Lance saw a vendor selling what he thought was grapes. He bought some and tasted it. It was only later that he knew it was lanzones. His comment: “Very good. Now, I can say why my wife could tell the difference.”

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Posted on November 9th, 2008 under Fruits. Tags: Lanzones. Comments: None

As more and more enthusiasts are getting interested in planting Red Lady Papaya, which is very much in demand as ripe table papaya, there are also some seedling growers who are trying to make a fast buck from this papaya variety. Beware of them because they pass seedlings grown from the seeds of the hybrid plants as F1 or first filial generation seedlings.

Sometime in 2006, we tried planting six Red Lady seedlings which we got from Dr. Ronaldo A. Sumaoang, president and CEO of Novatech Agri-Food Industries, and we are now making some money from the fruits even with this limited number. This made us interested to plant some more, and Dr. Sumaoang provided us additional seedlings, which he obtained from a seedling grower

Planted during the last wet season. the plants are now bearing fruits but definitely, the seeds used by the seedling grower were not F1s. The fruits are a clear proof of the segregating characters of the plants, as they van in size, shape, and density. Some plants bear elongated fruits, while the others have oblong fruits. Unfortunately, too, the fruits are not as close to each as those of the Fl. The plants are also tall.

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Posted on November 6th, 2008 under Fruits. Tags: Papaya, Red Lady Papaya, Seeds. Comments: None

The Bagobo-Tagabaw tribe in Barangay Sibulan, Toril District, Davao City has proven that organic farming works and can go large scale with high-end niche market.

Residing near the foot of Mt. Apo, the Philippines’ tallest peak, the tribe grows super sweet organic banana. Hernan Ambe, operations manager of Sibulan Organic Banana Growers Multipurpose Cooperative (SOBAGROMCO), said they are using the Bungulan variety, because it can thrive well under organic environment. The ‘fingers of the fruit grow up to 14 inches in length, longer than the Cavendish variety which is traditionally exported.

Ambe, a Bagobo-Tagabawa native and a barangay councilor, said that the Foundation for Agrarian Reform Cooperatives in Mindanao, Inc. (Farmcoop), a non-government organization established in 1995 to help the government implement the agrarian reform law, was instrumental in engaging his fellow natives to grow organic banana.

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Posted on November 4th, 2008 under Fruits. Tags: Banana, Mindanao. Comments: None

There’s a new jackfruit variety that farmers should try to grow and for food entrepreneurs to process to earn big money. It’s EVIARC Sweet, a variety that has a crunchy, thick, and juicy flesh.

It was developed by the Eastern Visayas Integrated Agricultural Research Center (EVIARC) to boost the country’s jackfruit industry, and was already registered at the Bureau of Plant IndustryNational Seed Industry Council (BPINSIC).

The demand for the planting materials of this variety is increasing, and to cope with it, EVIARC has trained government agricultural technicians and private gardeners in jackfruit propagation, and has established scion groves in Provincial Technical Institutes of Agriculture (PTIA) Provincial Research and Extension Centers (PRECs) to produce more planting materials.

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Posted on October 24th, 2008 under Fruits. Tags: Jackfruit. Comments: 1

Not every technology from better developed countries works well under Philippine conditions. For instance, the 5 meter x 5 meter distance of planting mangoes that was introduced from Israel was adopted in a hurry by many mango growers, including owners of large plantations. Some new growers are also using this technology.

In our travel around the country, we have seen that indeed the technology is not suitable under local conditions because the canopy of our mango varieties is spreading and the trees grow tall. The branches of many trees are already overlapping after only a few years. Experts say that mutual shading of the branches would render them practically useless as these would not flower and produce fruits.

We can only guess that two things will most likely happen. Mango growers who used this technology will have to prune heavily or probably cut down half of their trees to avoid mutual shading of the branches. This would mean that the grower will lose half of his investment in terms of finances and time.
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Posted on October 18th, 2008 under Fruits, Technology. Tags: Mango. Comments: None

The mango industry, being the country’s pride and signature export, has to maintain a standard quality for its physical properties. The fruits have to be big, smooth on the outside fleshy, sweet, and almost fiberless in the inside. Apparently, not every mango picked from the tree will pass the quality test, especially during peak season. After sorting them out, many of these harvested mangoes will be discarded as “rejects”.

Rejects are the fruits with physical damages or those with cracks, bruises, and other forms of physical injuries, including deformity. It also includes undersized fruits and those damaged by strong winds or typhoons and during harvest due to improper handling.
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Posted on October 15th, 2008 under Fruits. Tags: Mango. Comments: None

Rambutan has long been grown in Southern Luzon and parts of Mindanao. It has started to be grown in other places where people thought the fruit tree could not be grown, like Northern Luzon and many other places. Some are successful, some are not.

Here are pointers on growing this exotic fruit.

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Posted on October 15th, 2008 under Fruits. Tags: Rambutan. Comments: None

While the country’s agriculture sector is just about to draw up initial steps to combat climate change, another kind of change is emerging and slowly taking its toll on the country’s rice production.

This is crop change or crop shifting wherein farmers abandon rice farming in favor of a more profitable crop particularly banana. Such change in crop production gradually contributes to the declining rice-producing areas in the country particularly in Southern Mindanao.

FROM RICE TO BANANA
Data from the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Region XI revealed that from the 21,393 hectares planted to rice in 2005 in the region, almost one half or 10,047 ha were already converted to banana farms as there is a huge demand for the said crop in the export market. As of 2007, DA said the demand for fresh banana export is around 7.34 million metric tons valued at $475 million.

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Posted on October 14th, 2008 under Fruits, Other Crops, Rice. Tags: Banana, Farming, Mindanao, Rice. Comments: None