The Department of Agriculture in Region 11 has distributed at least 135,000 Panama disease-resistant banana seedlings to enable small-scale farmers to recover from infestation.
DA 11, through its High Value Crops Development Program, plans to distribute more than one million GCTCV 218 and 219 seedlings. GCTCV refers to Giant Cavendish Tissue Culture Variance, a semi-clone banana varieties found to be resistant to Panama or Fusarium Wilt Disease.
The distribution is part of DA’s package of assistance to contain the spread of the disease.
Other interventions include eradication, trichoderma application and training.
“We started the distribution of the seedlings January this year after we have collaborated with the private sector, particularly Lapanday Food Corporation,” said DA integrated laboratory chief Susan Razo.
Razo said the distribued 135,000 GCTCV 218 seedlings covered 90 hectares of banana plantations across the region covering 289 beneficiaries.
Razo said the government would increase the distribution, which is being done weekly.
She said farmers from the provinces picked up the planting materials from the nursery of Lapanday in Davao City.
“This shows the interest of the farmers to avail themselves of the assistance and willingness to provide the logistics particularly the vehicle, fuel and the labor during hauling,” she said.
Razo said critical to the production of soma-clones banana plantlets was the selection as not all tissue-culture laboratories were capable.
She said DA 11 signed a contract with Lapanday for the production of the GCTCV 218 and 219 plantlets to ensure farmers the planting materials distributed were of good quality.
Meanwhile, Lapanday research group manager Maria Emilia Rita Fabregar said the company saw the need to support both the government and small-scale banana growers in managing Fusarium disease.
“[Managing] the Panama [Fusarium] disease is critical to the industry. We cannot confine ourselves on our own, we are willing to share what we are capable of,” she said.