THE Department of Agriculture’s (DA) Biotechnology Program Office (BPO) is seeking to prop up abaca production by developing better strains of the plant that are resistant to the deadly mosaic, bract mosaic and the bunchy-top viruses that crippled the country’s biggest abaca producer in 1999.

Dr. Alicia Ilaga, director of the BPO, said the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) College of Agriculture, the UPLB Crop Science Cluster-Institute of Plant Breeding (CSC-IPB), Fiber Industry Development Authority and the DA are now collaborating on developing varieties that are resistant to the three viruses through radiation-induced mutation.

Dr. Teodora Dizon of the CSC-IPB in UPLB and her team worked on two commercial varieties of abaca at the outset. These are the Tinawagang Pula and Tangongon from Sorsogon.

Dizon’s team tried to determine the lethal dose for the abaca varieties and irradiate shoot cultures in order to find out the correct dosage to make these varieties resistant to the viruses.

Suckers were collected from the two varieties and were analyzed for the presence of viruses, with infected plants eventually being treated.

Tissue cultures of the Tinawagang Pula variety from Albay were also obtained.

Both cultivars were successfully micropropagated through in-vitro culture and system regeneration, and the rest were subjected to the process of trial and error in determining the right lethal dose to attain the plants’ immunity.

Dr. Antonio Lalusin Jr. of the CSC-IPB in UPLB, also a member of the first abaca project, worked on the development of molecular markers in abaca to eliminate only one abaca virus, the bunchy-top.

The bunchy-top virus is the most deleterious among the three viruses. It does not only destroy the fiber quality of abaca plants. Once the virus hits, plant growth ceases. Therefore, the retrieval of fibers from the infected plants would be impossible.

Lalusin’s team utilized the bunchy-top resistant genes of Pakol, a variety of banana, by cross breeding them with abaca plants and later on breeding them back to the pure-bred abaca plants.

Tests for resistance to bunchy-top were later conducted by infecting the plants with the virus.

The project aims to come up with bunchy-top-resistant abaca plants that yield more fiber of good quality.

Ilaga noted that while Bicol accounts for 66 pecent, or 52,666 hectares, of the total abaca area mapped by the department, it also reported a 27-percent incidence of viral diseases, particularly bunchy-top.

The BPO noted that for the past three centuries, abaca production declined by 0.15 percent, 0.84 percent and 0.12 percent, prompting the need to reinvigorate the industry to respond to increased demand in the global market.