The Department of Agriculture (DA), through its Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR), is targeting 69 potential technologies for commercialization in 2006.

The thrust will be spearheaded by BAR's National Technology Commercialization Program (NTCP), which was launched last year to help close the gap between technology research and development (R&D) and commercialization.

"This effort is commendable," said DA Undersecretary Jesus Emmanuel Paras, "as BAR envisioned that technologies are strategically placed and transferred to areas and communities where they are most needed," thus enhancing transfer and realizing the impact of research results.

Paras was opening programs speaker at the BAR-organized Agriculture and Fishery Technology Forum (AFTF) held last May 18-19 at the DA Bureau of Soils and Water Management (BSWM) in Diliman, Quezon City.

The two-day forum was one of the main highlights of the celebration of this year's Farmers' and Fisherfolk's Month (May).

During the activity, government R&D institutions and agencies and private entities exhibited the new products and technologies they have generated.

In a speech read for him by DA Assistant Secretary Felix Montes, Paras lauded the NTCP as a program that "supports the appropriate promotion and marketing of R&D outputs, specifically mature technologies with comparative advantage in the domestic and global markets."

The DA official defined "mature technologies" as those that have been assessed as suitable to the needs of farmers and fisherfolk and ready for adoption.

"This is in line with DA's goal to empower farmers and fisherfolk through agribusiness development project," Paras said.

He also lauded BAR's flagship R&D programs, named Community-based Participatory Action Research (CPAR), which is now addressing the weak research-extension linkage.

CPAR, he said basically provides a platform for technology assessment that involves participation of the community together with experts and researchers, local government units (LGUs), and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in identifying and implementing the most appropriate technologies that will meet the community's priority needs.

During the forum, an operations manual on CPAR was launched to assist the regional R&D partners (DA regional integrated agricultural research centers or RIARCs and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources-Regional Fisheries Research and Development Centers or BFAR-RFRDC).

BAR director Nicomedes P. Eleazar said the manual aims to assist DA's regional R&D partners in implementing CPAR in their respective regions.

"It is the aim of the Bureau to promote the importance and potentials of our national and regional commodities such as rice, corn, high-value crops, livestock, and fisheries," he stressed.

Eleazar said that one feature that BAR has been emphasizing on CPAR is "sharing of knowledge to our priority stakeholders in ground zero, meaning exchange of knowledge and research output is observed directly right on farm, with our farmers witnessing and applying the results themselves."

Summing up, Paras emphasized that "CPAR and NTCP complement each other as they are both client-oriented, demand-driven, and market- oriented initiatives that eventually are geared toward achieving commercialization in agriculture and fisheries."