Sugarcane growers in the Philippines and in five other Asian countries now need not worry about the quality of planting materials they use.

These are disease-free, as they undergo thorough and elaborate quarantine and disease-indexing procedures established by the Philippine Sugar Research Institute Foundation, Inc. (Philsurin) under the CFC/ISO 20: Sugar Variety Improvement in Southeast Asia and the Pacific project.

CFC stands for Common Fund for Commodities under the United Nations while ISO means International Sugar Organization.

Funded by the Netherlands-based CFC, the regional R&D project involves the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh. It aims to increase sugarcane productivity and help long-term competitiveness of sugarcane in the region through development, dissemination and adoption of high-yielding, pest-resistant and ecologically adapted varieties.

Its executing agency is Philsurin, headed by Director General Leon Arceo. Co-implementing agency is the UP Los Baños Institute of Plant Breeding (UPLB-IPB).

"The post-entry quarantine greenhouse of UPLB-IPB has been rehabilitated to ensure that exchanged varieties are free from all diseases before planting in commercial fields. It houses the varieties exchanged among the five CFC/ISO 20 member-countries," said Dr. Fe dela Cueva, UPLB-IPB researcher and quarantine and disease-indexing component project leader.

The varieties, Dr. dela Cueva added, undergo a thorough process of indexing for prevalent sugarcane diseases, among them leaf scald (white streaks on the lead blade), yellow leaf syndrome (yellowing of the midrib), mosaic (variations in leaf color), Fiji disease (leaf galls), streak (pale spots in leaf vein), and ratoon stunting disease (shortening of the internodes).

Pathologists maintain sugarcane varieties from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Australia at the UPLB-IPB post-entry quarantine greenhouse while varieties from France are grown at the Philsurin experiment station in Victorias City, Negros Occidental.