LAGUNA, Philippines - The Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA)-led project on Upgrading the Calamansi Value Chain towards Improving the Calamansi Industry of Oriental Mindoro has been selected by the Grow Asia Learning Alliance (GALA) to be featured in its Spotlight Series. This is in line with GALA’s initiative to promote action-oriented research and enable more partnerships between knowledge producers and value chain actors to scale the impact of agricultural research in the Southeast Asian region.
The GALA Spotlight Series is an opportunity for agriculture researchers in Southeast Asia to have their research presented in a short video format. It serves as a call for potential partners and investors who could help scale the development impact of research in the region. The projects for this series are evaluated based on their impact on smallholder farmers, potential to scale, and evidence of success.
The SEARCA-led, Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR)-funded project aims to address the technical and market constraints that confront the calamansi industry. The project has begun introducing solutions to address the challenges faced by the calamansi farmers such as rehabilitation of old calamansi trees through rejuvenative pruning, introduction of integrated pest management (IPM) strategies and mass rearing and release of biological control agents (e.g. Trichogramma chilonis, lacewings, and coccinellid beetles), promotion of good agricultural practices (GAP) and development of disease detection tools for Huanglongbing (HLB) and Citrus Tristeza Virus Disease (CTVD), promotion of off-season production through fertilization, pruning and irrigation, and processing of different calamansi-based products.
SEARCA collaborates with several academic institutions, local government units and the private sector in the implementation of the project, linkages which are in line with the thrust of SEARCA’s 11th Five-Year Plan to strengthen Academe-Industry-Government (AIG) interconnectivity. This project is co-implemented with the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), Mindoro State College of Agriculture and Technology (MinSCAT), local government units of Oriental Mindoro through the Provincial and Municipal Agriculture Offices, and other national and regional agencies and bureaus.
Credits to: Grow Asia (www.growasia.org)
