TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol (PIA) –While it may be too early to say, agriculture authorities are now keenly looking at the rice yield in the second semester to validate what has been apparently a huge success in the first semester’s harvest.
We are still very hopeful that things would finally work out fine, shares Bohol Rice Seed Program Coordinator at the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA), Lorebien Lagapa.
Sharing at the Kapihan sa PIA to campaign on the activities for the National Rice Awareness Month in November, Lagapa said the first semester’s harvest has yielded an average of 3.6 metric tons per hectare.
According to the Philippine Rice Information System (PRISM) maintained by the Philippine Rice Research Institute in the Science City of Muñoz in Nueva Ecija, Bohol has an average yield of 2.05 tons per hectare in the first semester of 2022.
Lagapa however, who gathers data straight from the local farmers said last year’s local data was an average of 2.73 metric tons based on their local monitoring at the OPA.
In fact, she added that they have even monitored yields reaching 8 tons per hectare, from farmers who have been trained on the proper management.
At the Kapihan sa PIA weekly forum streamed live over PIA Bohol youtube channel and facebook, Lagapa, who came with the Department of Agriculture’s Provincial Agricultural Training and Coordination Office’s (PATCO) Maria Chona Maleza credited the recent increases in yield to the 4 strategies that the DA and OPA have been implementing.
Quality seeds distribution, she volunteered the information.
She said with PhilRice, certified rice seeds are planted in areas that are beyond the reach of irrigation facilities, where high-yielding hybrid rice are also planted in irrigated areas to maximize on the potentials.
In Bohol, PhilRice contracted the seeds from 75 active Bureau of Plant Industry and National Seed Control Services-accredited seed growers and consolidated by a farmers’ cooperative for distribution to farmers in Region 7 and even Region 8, DA authorities said.
These inbred seeds are heat-resistant and have been tested to survive in rain-fed areas, so that farmers can get the maximum harvest by using the best-suited seeds to areas with sparse water, DA PATCO Maleza explained.
And then there is farm mechanization, which, according to the DA, is a program run by Philippine Center for Post- Harvest and Mechanization (PHilMECH) contributes so much in mechanized transplanting and harvest reducing post- harvest loses and maximizing on yields.
And then there is the production support in terms of loans and credit facilities for inputs and mechanization, Lagapa pointed out.
Hybrid rice, to be truly able to produce as much relies on its tillering capacities; need necessary inputs like fertilizers, which could be applied at that time to get the most yield.
As to Maleza, the DA is allocating the biggest portion of its budget for rice in fertilizers and seeds.
And to complete the assistance to farmers, the government through the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) is handling out the training component of the whole rice industry, Lagapa said.
After a few months of interventions, Lagapa shared that in their crop-cut sampling for hybrid and inbred rice, promising results showed.
Crop cutting to get a representative sample of the harvest yields mean putting a demarcation in a subplot within the field, measuring the production yield in that marked area and crop yield is calculated as total production divided by total harvested area in the crop cut subplots.
In OPA and DA demonstration farms in the first semester from January to June, for inbred rice crop cut sampling has shown 5 metric tons of harvest, while hybrid crop-cut sample yielded 8 tons, Lagapa reported.
While the second quarter yield can determine the real figure, authorities are also looking at the possible effect of the long dry spell which the state weather bureau has predicted to hit several parts of the country.
Let us just keep our fingers crossed that it would still be a mild El Nino, so we could get the most of our farms, she said. (rahc/PIA-7/bohol)
