One indispensable fruit in a healthy diet is papaya. Unfortunately, the dieters fruit has become expensive due to its limited supply when the culprit, papaya ringspot virus (PRSV) attacked the papaya plantations in Cavite, Batangas and Laguna many years ago. It is even observed that the virus is already seen in papaya farms in Mindanao where the Davao Solo is grown.

Before the deadly virus infects and wipes out all our papaya plantations, the biotech community has already acted. Encouraged by the success of Hawaii who was able to develop a resistant papaya to the ringspot virus of Hawaiian strain, biotech scientists joined their counterparts in Southeast Asia to adopt the technology for their own papayas. These papayas will be tested for resistance against local virus strains.

Last year, Pierriden Perez, a Filipino molecular biologist spent a year at Malaysia's MARDI Biotechnology Centre's lab to develop our own special papayas that are resistant to PRSV. He had to go to Malaysia to undertake the research because under the Philippine biosafety laws, a permit has to be secured for every new type of research work. The permit granted by the national Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines was only for gene gun transformation while Perez's works will use agrobacterium-mediated transformation. (Transformation is the technical term used to describe the incorporation of a gene into a host organism.)

Anticipating the long bureaucratic process for the granting of permit, Perez decided to bring his work to Malaysia to jumpstart the process since MARDI scientists are already developing their won transgenic papayas.

At Dr. Vilasini Pilai's lab in MARDI, Perez simply adapted Dr. Pilai's transformation protocol to the Filipino Davao Solo and the Filipino strain of the virus.

His hard work reaped results when in January this year, Perez returned home with 200 transgenic papaya plantlets ready for testing in the greenhouse. This special facility called BL2 located inside the compound of Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB) in Laguna was inaugurated in simple ceremonies last June 5.