Increased yield, as a consequence of reduced bacterial wilt infection made up the results obtained by UPLB researchers using grafting technique in eggplant production.

Project leader, Dr. Nenita L. Opina of the Crop Science Cluster of the College of Agriculture, UP Los Baños, indicated that when high-yielding, susceptible commercial varieties of eggplant were grafted with rootstocks resistant to bacterial wilt, reduced incidence of the disease was noted.  She added, however, that the degree of resistance showed by grafted plants was dependent on the level of resistance of the rootstocks.

Biotechnologists at UP Los Baños are hard at work putting the final touches to the prototype of a wastewater treatment system that uses bacteria.

A heightened awareness of the condition of its rivers had led local government units and concerned agencies in the province of Bulacan to tap BIOTECH of UP Los Baños for help in setting up bioremediation solutions, which are less costly and more environment-friendly than conventional chemical treatments.

Dr. Lorele C. Trinidad, researcher at BIOTECH, and leader of the team that is developing the bioremediation system, reported that the prototype they have developed can remove and at the same time recover heavy metals from water discharged during processing of gold and leather tanning.

Good news to our local dairy industry. UPLB-BIOTECH is in the way of refining its microbial rennet technology to make it more efficient and cheaper to use for cheese production.

Biotechnologist Dr. Susana Mercado reports that using coconut paring meal for culturing Rhizopus chinensis—a fungus which can ferment to produce an enzyme similar to chymosin — may be used as substitute for the more expensive wheat bran.

Why was support to decision making in setting up research priorities seemed unimportant in the past? They said that there was limited or lack of available systematic and organized data;  and if ever data or studies were available, they typically dealt on limited areas, quite fragmented, often dated and with inadequate analysis.  Collecting, organizing and analyzing data related to the benefits derived from any particular use could be a problem because of the high-cost of doing the activity.  In our regime of “science under scarcity,” decision support systems are critical in efficiently allocating resources in the public sector investments especially in research.

It is in this context that the project entitled “Agricultural Research Prioritization at the Regional Level: Case Study in Cagayan Valley, Philippines”  was undertaken so that research managers may be adequately advised on how to allocate resources in the region across major research programs while considering the mandate of the offices they are connected to.  With the aid of a decision support method using the criterion efficiency, the decision making method was developed and applied to the actual setting in Isabela, Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino provinces.  As a result, the project came out with software for the application of the Geographic Information System (GIS) that can be used to identify research domains; including the application of software for economic analysis to guide research prioritization.