By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

Rainy season is here again. The crops, trees, and plants would gladly bathe under the showers of rain. However, when typhoons strike and floods flow like a river, the trees would sway and dance in a fast forward rhythm and plants may drown and die.

But among the plants, one variety of rice can survive flooding. This rice variety is named sub1 or submergence1, according to Dr. Dave Mackill, head of the plant breeding, genetics and biotechnology division of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Mackill and other researchers from IRRI and the University of California in Riverside and in Davis campuses have discovered from an Indian rice variety FR13A a gene that can withstand flooding of up to 17 days.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

THE NATIONAL Program for Sustainable Upland Farming Through Conservation Farming Villages (CFV) will be receiving P30.2 million from the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

Likewise, the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), a sub-agency of the Department of Science and Technology, will provide a counterpart fund of P8.5 million.

The total amount will be used put up model CFVs, otherwise known as “Barangay Sagip-Saka” in selected land degradation hotspots in the country to enhance the transfer of conservation farming technologies and practices anchored on participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation processes at the community level.

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By INQUIRER.net

THE CONFERENCE of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) recently elected Dr. William D. Dar as the new chair of its Committee for Science and Technology (CST). He was nominated as a distinguished Filipino by the cluster of Asian states on behalf of the region at the 8th COP session in Madrid.

A TOYM awardee for agriculture, Dr. Dar was Secretary of Agriculture and Presidential Adviser on Rural Development in the Estrada government, the first alumnus of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) to assume the position.

After the Estrada government, he became the first Filipino and Asian Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Andhra Pradesh, India — a global institute serving Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

A STUDY from the University of Southeastern Philippines in Davao City has found that a compound from garden balsam (Impatiens balsamina), otherwise known as “kamantigue,” can control a disease striking the durian.

Durian is a major export product from southern Mindanao but is constantly being attacked by serious diseases by the fungi Phytophthora palmivora. Durian is constantly attacked by stem canker, root rot, leaf blight, die-back of seedlings and mature trees and the rotting of fruits.

The study, headed by USEP Professor Belly Dionio, said that production losses in the durian industry across Southeast Asia are estimated to be around 20 percent to 25 percent annually.

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By Agence France-Presse

PARIS–An “ear of corn” may one day take on a whole new meaning after South Korean researchers determined that plants are sensitive to sound, New Scientist reports.

They hope that farmers may eventually encourage plants to flower or ripen by blasting sound into the fields, the British weekly says in next Saturday’s issue.

Mi-Jeong Jeong of the National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology in Suwon and colleagues explored a long-standing hypothesis that, as plants react to light and also to touch, they may also respond to sound.

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