AGRICULTURE Secretary William Dar spearheaded the inauguration of the P50 million worth Precision and Digital Agriculture Center (PreDiC) facilities located in Central Luzon State University (CLSU) in the Science City of Muñoz in Nueva Ecija.
The project was funded through the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) with the vision of using data, science, and innovation for the modernization and advancement of agriculture.
This project is the First National PreDiC in the Philippines and was proposed with the title “Harnessing Precision and Digital Agriculture Technologies for High Value Crops at Central Luzon State University.”
In his keynote speech, Dar said: “Tuwang-tuwa ako na talagang ang CLSU kapag binigyan ko ng isang responsibility for a program or a project, they always deliver.”
He also suggested “to bring to harness the synergy between and among the agencies in agriculture and put up a technical committee so that PreDiC will become the repository of all the technologies that are being generated by the Science City of Muñoz.”
The center aims to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal on Zero Hunger and to make Philippine agriculture more productive and more efficient in its use of time and resources through accurate data gathering.
Among its notable facilities and technologies are a greenhouse, irrigation canals, field monitoring system, microclimate monitoring equipment, fabrication tools, and farm machineries including a 40-hp tractor.
The center has also implemented projects including the mapping of the spatial variability of soil fertility, the development of a variable rate fertilizer applicator, and the development of a 12-row onion direct seeder.