Agriculture Business Week

In over three decades, she has bred more than a dozen high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of sugarcane.

She has been behind the massive dispersal of HYVs by the Philippine Sugar Research Institute Foundation, Inc. (PHILSURIN) that enabled the country to remarkably increase its sugar production by 43.55 percent from the 1.63 million metric tons in 1999 to 2.34 million metric tons in crop year (CY) 2003-2004 the biggest increase in 20 years.

She also has been behind the successful dispersal by PHILSURIN of over 640.52 million HYV seedpieces in 2002, encompassing 43 percent of over 364,000 hectares devoted to sugarcane in the country’s sugar-producing areas.

This is the story of Aurora T. Barredo, manager of PHILSURIN Experiment Station-Victorias in Negros Occidental. The vital role she has played for PHILSURIN’s Variety Improvement Program is her major contribution to the industry’s sugarcane breeding program.

Barredo holds a degree in B.S. Agriculture and M.S. in Agronomy, Major in Crop Physiology from the Univer4ty of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) in Laguna. In 1971, she was hired as an assistant geneticist at the Sugarcane Breeding Station of Victorias Milling Company, Inc. (VMC). She worked with VMC breeding consultant Dr. Albert Mangelsdorf, principal geneticist of the HSPA Experiment Station in Hawaii, who further enhanced her rudiments in sugarcane breeding. She observed breeding in Hawaii in 1991, in Taiwan in 1994 and in Florida, USA and Columbia-in 1996.

In 1980, she headed the VMC Sugarcane Breeding and Selection under agronomy department head Federico C. Barredo, her husband and also from the UPLB. The VMC Sugarcane Breeding Station was established in 1967 and was the only sugar mill that had undertaken a breeding program.

The first VMC-bred variety, VMC 67611, was released in 1976 after nine years of painstaking process. Yet conventionally, it takes 10 to 11 years to release a sugarcane variety. From 1967 to 1997, a period of 30 years, VMC released 10 varieties.

“Breeding is history in the making,” says Barredo.

Due to the lengthy process of releasing, however, in a meeting before the VMC breeding committee sometime in 1988 prior to the release of VMC 76-16, then vice president for agriculture Virgilio R. Flores, seriously remarked, “I’m very much worried that before my retirement, not a single variety is released.”

Contrary to his statement before the VMC agriculture area was phased out early in 1998, following the financial collapse of the sugar firm due to; mismanagement by its officers, Barredo was able to release six HYVs.

With PHILSURIN’s seven-year breeding cycle, on one hand, five HYVs were released: PS 1(VMC 84-947), PS 2 (VMC 88-354) and PS 3 (VMC 84-524) in 2001 and PS 4 (VMC 95-152) and PS 5 (VMC 95-09) -in 2004. Most recently released are PSR 97-41 and PSR 97-45.

Barredo considers VMC 86-550 as the best variety she has ever bred. “It was almost perfect when it was released it had a high rendement and was disease resistant,” she said. It was the “crowning glory” of her entire career as a sugarcane breeder, she added.

However, it was discovered later during its early commercial propagation that it was susceptible to downy mildew and smut. Good thing the diseases were successfully contained with the following antidotes:

- hot-water treatment of seed pieces
- seedpieces treatment and/or spot spraying of either Ridomil or Apron to infected crop
- uprooting of infected stalks.

Based on the records of VMC Cane Sourcing Department, VMC 86-550 is the only local variety that obtained global yield standard, ranging from 3 to 3.20 LKG/TC for individual planters. In fact this super variety is above the benchmark for global yield standard of 2.5 LKG/TC and above.

In cane volume delivered by both district and non-district planters in Negros Occidental to VMC, the super variety has consistently topped for six consecutive crop years now from CY 2002-2003 to CY 2007-2008. Last CY, 1,217,941 tons of VMC 86-550 were milled, representing 36 percent of the combined volume of 3,351,398- tons of sugarcane milled for the period. It was the biggest contribution of the top yielding HYV to VMC’s cane supply.

As to how Barredo produced VMC 86-550, this veteran sugarcane breeder said, “You know what you want and what you have.” Simply put, she emphasized that as a breeder, one must have to look back, and from there evaluate the relations of one’s efforts. She advised to use discernment in determining quality parents and quality progenies in the tedious process of sugarcane breeding to obtain the best results.

In releasing a variety, she stood pat on the following criteria: Is it better than the commercially available varieties in yield and in disease resistance? Is it stable? Is it profitable to grow?

And as to what she advises to sugarcane breeders, she named two good qualities they should have: be patient and systematic and be a team leader.

Last year, on March 1, at 59, Barredo opted an early retirement. She attends to her family’s growing winery, but she enjoys devoting most of her time to Bible education. She currently preaches even to the deaf and mute.

By Eduardo A. Duarte