To preserve and expand the production of heirloom rice in the region, the Department of Agriculture-Cordillera continues to implement programs supporting its production through various interventions under the P70 million allotment for the said traditional rice for 2024.
In the Kapihan held at DA-CAR for the yearly observance of “Farmers and Fisherfolk Month,” Regional Technical Director for Operations Danilo Daguio explained the department’s continuous support to heirloom rice farmers, ensuring its preservation.
Heirloom rice is considered a special breed of indigenous rice that exhibits exceptional nutritional value, flavor, aroma, color, and cooking quality.
“What we are currently doing is to help heirloom rice farmers increase the yield of by giving them some assistance in terms of inputs, pest and disease management, machineries, and in processing and marketing. For 2024, our budget for heirloom rice is P60 million, and we are proposing a higher budget for next year covering all provinces,” Daguio said.
DA-CAR recently conducted an appraising and preference analysis study on the production of traditional heirloom rice landraces that identified 870 heirloom rice landraces, with 622 still existing while 248 recorded as extinct or no longer grown in any of the barangays in the four identified heirloom rice-producing provinces in the region.
Kalinga, Mountain Province, Ifugao, and Benguet are the four provinces that produce heirloom rice. There are 41 identified top preferred heirloom rice landraces in Cordillera.
A landrace is generally defined as a cultivated, genetically heterogeneous variety that has evolved in a certain ecogeographical area and is therefore adapted to the edaphic and climatic conditions and its traditional management and uses.
The study assessed heirloom rice landraces as the basis of the immediate collection, characterization, and promotion of potential heirloom rice landraces from the project expansion areas in Benguet, Ifugao, Kalinga, and Mountain Province.
In the first phase of this project, 55 heirloom rice landraces were collected in farmers’ fields in the 17 barangays of Benguet, Kalinga, Ifugao, and Mountain Province.**JTLlanes
