A Southeast Asian research consortium funded by $2-million grant by the Netherlands-based Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) is enabling the Philippines to commercialize high-yielding sugarcane varieties that will boost upon output in the next two years.

Dr. Ramon M. Cu, deputy director of Philippine Sugar Research Institute (Philsurin), said the Philippines may commercialize in two years several good sugarcane varieties which mainly K8887 which comes from Thailand.

The Thai variety produced the highest sugar at 12.39 metric tons (MT) per hectare among 14 varieties field-tested in the Phiippines.

The highest sugar production from this variety came out despite its being only third from in sugarcane production at 118.04 MT of cane per hectare.

The first and second varieties, which also come from Thailand, had yields of 125.41 MT and 120.05 MT of canes per hectare, but these only enabled sugar recovery of 10.61 MT and 11.76 MT per hectare.

Leon M. Arceo, director general of Philsurin, said member-countries of the research consortium took advantage of big savings estimated at $2.1 million from the collaborative research. The consortium members are Philippines, Bangladesh (Bangladesh Sugar Research Institute), Indonesia (Indonesian Sugar Research Institute), Thailand (Office of Cane and Sugar Board), and Malaysia (Malaysian Agri Research and Development Institute).

The development of a single sugarcane variety may cost as much as $60,000 each. For all these 56 varieties studied by the consortium, this should cost $3.36 million. Besides, sugarcane varieties are normally developed over 10 years which was shortened to just five years under the program.
To ensure prevention of transfer of pests and diseases, part of the program is a strict quarantine procedure for the exchange of the varieties.

Among the quarantine requirements are import permit and phytosanitary certificate, two0year post entry quarantine in an insect-free containment facility, seven-month cane checking for diseases using ocular inspection, ELISA, and PCR-based disease-diagnostic techniques, and open field quarantine in Guimaras Island.