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Monday, June 05, 2006
Tabuk emerging as RP hybrid rice capital
TABUK, KALINGA -- Now that Kalinga's banner has been planted on the US soils through its acclaimed unoy red rice, the province's premier town is making a new record on the hybrid rice program of the government.
Consistently performing as top hybrid rice producer under the GMA rice program for the past two years, Tabuk is fast emerging as the country's hybrid rice capital.
The town's hybrid rice production area is now about 20 percent of the country's total area devoted to hybrid rice.
Because of promising economic rewards farmers see in hybrid rice production, there was a sudden shift from planting inbred rice varieties to high yield varieties, better known as hybrid varieties.
In 2001, some Tabuk farmers tried producing the variety on a 47- hectare demo-farm. Three years later, the technology spread like epidemic to other rice farmers, and the area devoted to hybrid rice tremendously soared to 5,500 hectares.
Some 4,000 farmers assimilated the technology and have now mastered it like the traditional way.
In 2004, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, on whose initials the GMA rice program was coined, awarded Tabuk municipality as top hybrid rice producer in the country during a farmer's ceremony in Alaminos, Pangasinan.
The following year, the municipality's hybrid area increased to 6,698 hectares with an average production of 6.5 - 7.5 metric tons per hectare. The average production from the ordinary inbred rice varieties ranges from three to four metric tons per hectare.
Studies showed the yield from conventionally bred rice has reached its peak and remained constant.
This prompted the agriculture department to start finding alternative farming technology, resulting in the introduction of hybrid rice in Tabuk in 2000, which was rapidly adopted by most farmers. The technology even sank deeper into the farmer's system through the Phil Rice's education model "University Without Walls."
The system was followed by the introduction of extension techniques such as community organizing, hands-on training and field visits by technicians from the department.
The hybrid rice seed, technically known as F1, is the product of two genetically different lines and obtains the positive qualities of its parents through a process called heterosis. When planted and harvested, the F1 products are called F2 grains, which when milled are sold as commercial rice at the markets.
(June 5, 2006 issue)
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