The Bt Eggplant PH team of the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB) organized an in-house training workshop on ‘crop production and management’ and ‘product stewardship’ as part of their capacity-building activities.
The program kicked off on February 09, 2023, with a series of lectures about crop and seed production including the identification and management of common insect pests, weeds, and diseases of eggplant. Moreover, the team was also taught project planning, monitoring and evaluation, and management to prepare them to become trainers later on.
The next part of the training workshop was conducted last February 22 and 28 at the IPB Entomology Laboratory wherein Dr. Joel Adorada gave insights on insect resistance management and monitoring in the Philippine context. On the other hand, Ms. Catherine Hazel M. Aguilar and Mr. Patrick Louie G. Lipio imparted their knowledge and expertise on morphological characterization, molecular characterization, and profiling of eggplant.
Ms. Aguilar (second from the left) shows the morphological characteristics of eggplant to the members of the Bt Eggplant PH Team. (Photo from Bt Eggplant PH Team)
The Bt Eggplant PH team also attended a product stewardship training on March 16. Mahyco Private Limited, an agricultural company based in India that aims to empower smallholder farmers through their high-quality products and the first developer of Bt eggplant, shared their knowledge and experiences on the Bt technology – research and development, production, processing, and marketing in India and Bangladesh.
These trainings are in preparation for the team’s plans on establishing a comprehensive growers’ education program as part of the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research/DA-Biotech Program (DA-BAR/DA-BIOTECH)-funded project titled “Support to Mass Production and Adopt-A-Community Programs to Increase Production of High Yielding, Quality Planting Eggplant Varieties with Reduced Pesticide Use Through Biotechnology in Sta. Maria, Pangasinan and Tiaong, Quezon”.
Furthermore, the Bt Eggplant PH team of IPB will provide trainings to capacitate the local farmers in the production of the novel eggplant variety – the Bt eggplant. (Ricky Bryan U. Biagtan)