BAYBAY CITY, Leyte -
The second Eastern Visayas #Agritalk streamed via Facebook live on the ATI in Eastern Visayas Facebook page last October 17, 2022. As part of the program’s aim to promote urban agriculture, Senior Research Specialist and Head of the Department of Agriculture VIII-Regional Crop Protection Center, Lutgarda Francisco, was invited as guest speaker to talk about Biocontrol Agents in Corn Production. The livestream started with a series of videos on the current global state of agriculture, the dying interest of youth on agriculture, and ATI’s initiatives and trainings and the impacts they have made on farmers.
The webinar formally started with an opening message from the Center Director of Agricultural Training Institute-Regional Training Center-8, Hazel Grace Taganas. In her message, she emphasizes how this webinar will be of great help to corn farmers, particularly those who constantly have to deal with pests. She also mentions the increasing prices of pesticides and their harmful effects on humans and the environment, thus “pesticides should be the last and the least option in IPM..” she says before ending her speech with words of encouragement to the viewers.
Lutgarda Francisco kickstarted her discussion by emphasizing the advantages of Biological Control on pest management. As opposed to pesticides being harmful, she states in her discussion how biological control is much safer to human health and to the environment as it doesn’t pose any health hazard and is sustainable. She also highlights the long-term impacts of using biological agents—great money-saver for farmers because they are fairly cheap and that pests do not develop any kind of resistance towards them.
Included in her discussion are the various biological agents, which mode/sites is the entry of infection as well as when and what timing they are best applied, the preparation needed to be done prior to application, and in her presentation showed illustrations of the process and preparation for viewers to visually see how they should be properly done.
A Q&A with the viewers then followed the discussion. For viewers to actively participate, the program offered prizes to those who can answer the questions correctly. Prizes included 100 pesos worth of e-load via e-raffle to viewers who left comments on the Facebook live during the discussion.
At the latter part of the segment, resource person Lutgarda Francisco mentions Trichogamma and Metarhizium being the most widely used biological agents of the region with the former being released since 1991 and is mostly applied in corn production. She also adds that there will be an enhancement of this biological agent through the Bantay Peste Program for Corn in different cluster areas. Moreover, she talked about metarhizium being produced in Eastern Visayas years back to resolve the outbreak of the rice black bug.
For farmers to acquire the various biological agents, they must provide a week’s notice on their municipal agricultural office before getting their hands on various biological agents with the provision of RCPC in collaboration with their respective municipality.
The webinar concluded with a speech from the assistant director of ATI-RTC-8, Dalmacio Pajanusta. In his closing remarks, he encouraged the viewers and especially the farmers watching to directly apply their learnings to their farming activities. He put emphasis on the need for biological agents to completely replace pesticides as the latter have made devastating impacts on the environment. Finally, he ends his speech with words of gratitude towards the people on and off camera who have made the second episode of Agritalk a success.
(reported by: Liv Yedda Mari R. Pajaron)
