P8.5M lost to rice tungro infestation in Antique
SAN JOSE, Antique – Rice tungro infestation has damaged rice farms in 11 municipalities in the province of Antique in a scale last experienced in the year 1982.
The Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA) placed the total worth of damage at P8.5 million.
The municipality of Sibalom lost more than P3.7 million, while the municipality of Barbaza lost more than P2.4 million. Other towns that suffered the same infestation are San Jose, San Remegio, Belison, Patnongon, Bugasong, Valderrama, Tibiao, Pandan and Hamtic.
Provincial IPM Coordinator Rogelio Crespo said the virus was last seen in this scale sometime during 1982. It is one of the most harmful diseases for rice plants, attacking in all stages of development and is more dangerous to young rice plants.
The rice tungro virus is spread by the green and zigzag leaf hoppers, common pests in rice paddies. They get the virus from cropped stems of infected plants, kulitis, and other weeds and grasses in farm lands and transfer them to growing and mature rice plants by sucking out their sap, thereby inoculating the plant with the virus.
Symptoms of infected rice include abnormal development, yellowish discoloration of the leaves and small, light rice grains.
The OPA also issued several recommendations for managing the disease like discouraging three cropping a year for communities with confirmed infection, synchronous planting for communities or whole barangays and plowing infected seedbeds and eliminating weeds that serve as hosts for the rice tungro virus organism, to name a few.
Meanwhile, the National Food Authority (NFA) in Western Visayas has 1.2 million bags of rice in its warehouses as of October 28 as its contribution to the national inventory of stocks of the staple cereal, which is “enough to feed the whole population for more than 30 days.”
NFA Regional Director Miguel Wycoco said palay harvests are also ongoing in the region and their agency’s direct procurement is adding an average of 7,600 bags of palay daily to the regional stocks, added Wycoco.
Based on the inventory of all government stocks in the country, Secretary Arthur Yap of the Department of Agriculture (DA) assured Filipinos that the country’s rice supply is stable.
Yap made the assurance during the send-off ceremony of the Luzon relief caravan initiated by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Thursday, October 29.
As of the third week of October, the NFA has 24 million bags, sufficient for the next six months, based on the agency’s average daily sales of 128,307 bags.
The volume is equivalent to 34 days’ food security requirement, based on the country’s daily need of 35,400 metric tons or 708,000 bags.
Yap said that apart from the stocks held by NFA’s 500 warehouses all over the country, ongoing harvests in the Visayas and Mindanao will boost the inventory.
The government also has started importing rice and initial shipments will arrive by January 2010.
“All in all, we are looking at about 140 days’ worth of stocks,” he stressed, as he sought to allay fears that rice inventory may not be enough.
