By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

COLLABORATION between the government, private sector and the academe is the key theme tying all the panel recommendations at the fourth en banc meeting of the Congressional Commission on Science and Technology and Engineering (COMSTE) held October 6.

The six COMSTE panels presented in the meeting include agriculture and food, electronics and semiconductors, energy and environment, health services, IT and IT-enabled industries and science, math and engineering education.

Of the six, COMSTE chairman and Senator Edgardo Angara said food and energy will be the body’s top priority.

“First, we have to start immediately to resolve agriculture issues. For energy, the recommendation to activate an institute of energy studies is good” given senate passage of Bill 2046, the Philippine Renewable Energy Act, he said.

During the meeting, Angara tasked each panel to itemize the cost of their recommendations so a budget plan can be allocated for urgent projects.

According to him, aside from providing innovative ideas to advance COMSTE’s key panels, Angara said it is crucial to know the funding required for the projects. “We can only implement the projects and insert it in the 2009 budget once we know the cost,” he said.

The Philippines as a “tropical greenhouse” gives the country leverage to be a major supplier of tropical fruits. Bringing to the panel’s attention is Bart Lapus, member of the agriculture and food panel.

Lapus presented to the board citrus fruits produced in the Philippines to show that they are better than those from Asian neighbors currently exported in the market.

He urged the body to provide a quality control (QC) system for the local agricultural produce and develop a cultivar for local growers.

In response for the need for QC systems, food and agriculture Dr. William Padolina, said the panel will set up more analytical product testing laboratories that will test the physical and chemical composition — vitamins, nutrients and healthful components — of locally-grown agricultural crops to make them qualify for export.

Lapus said the need to develop a cultivar — to be distributed to local growers — that will produce standard citrus, such as pomelo, which the Philippines can export globally. Growing spice crops will propel growth of the country’s agriculture, which he said will be the ‘condiment of the future’.

The energy and environment panel led by Dr. Francisco Viray said that the Senate passage of Bill 2046 highlighted plans to tap renewable energy sources, specifically solar energy. The panel has high hopes the bill will become law as the congress and senate meet this week to settle details of the bill — ushering the use of geothermal, biomass, hydropower and oceanic currents to supply the country’s need for power.

Green energy is also a growth area for the semiconductor industry. According to Dr. Gregory Tangonan, head panel for the electronics and semiconductor industry, deployment of solar cell systems can be made possible by partnering with solar energy semiconductor companies with local centers. This is aimed to offset the cost of deploying photovoltaic systems with ten cells, which cost $10,000.