In support of the Negros Island initiative on organic agriculture, the Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod approved during its special session Tuesday an ordinance banning the entry of genetically modified living organisms in the city. The GMO-Free Ordinance is inspired by a similar ordinance of the Negros Occidental provincial government, proponents Councilors Jocelle Batapa-Sigue and Alex Paglumotan said.

”DuPont and IRRI are culprits of shrinking agricultural productivity around the world and in the Philippines, rice production is being systematically destroyed by the use of these hybrid and genetically-modified rice varieties that require massive use of expensive agro-chemicals marketed by giant agro-TNCs such as DuPont and Syngenta,” said Danilo H. Ramos, KMP Secretary-General in a press statement.

”These are the things that we can expect in the field of biotechnology in the Philippines,” said Dr. Eufemio Rasco, a Cornell University-schooled plant breeder, [...] He said the domestic market would see the commercial production of a variety of Khak Nuan papaya, genetically modified (GM) to resist the common pest ringspot, as well as an eggplant variety modified to resist fruit and shoot borers, and the GM rice called Golden Rice.

Dr. Randy Hautea, ISAAA global coordinator and its SEAsiaCenter director, told reporters that Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)-resistant rice from China ”may be available within 24 months,” or between now and 2010, and Golden Rice by 2012. Hautea made the disclosure last week at the press conference on the global launching of the 2008 Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops report [...] Bt rice is ”extensively field tested in China and awaiting approval by the Chinese regulatory authorities” for commercialization, the report said.

At the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), scientists are developing a rice variety with high tolerance to submersion under water for extended periods. IRRI has produce three widely grown varieties of rice that are flood tolerant - the Swarma and Mahsuri from India and the IR64 produced at IRRI’s facility in the Philippines (in Los Banos, Laguna Province) - David McKill, the head of IRRI’s plant-breeding division, told IRIN.

An international team of scientists is attempting to develop a new rice strain that will use less water and fertilizer but could boost yields by up to 50 percent to meet growing demand, a research institute said Wednesday. [...] The project aims to improve the efficiency of a rice plant’s photosynthesis, the process by which plants use solar energy to capture carbon dioxide and convert it into carbohydrates.

Some species, including rice, have a mode of photosynthesis known as C3 in which the capture of carbon dioxide is relatively inefficient. Other plants, such as maize and sorghum, have evolved a much more efficient form of photosynthesis known as C4.

Researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center say they have discovered how to genetically modify rice to make it more resistant to a disease that is ravaging Asian rice farms. A viral disease, known as rice tungro, destroys about $1.5 billion worth of rice every year in Southeast Asia. That’s roughly five to 10 percent of the yield in major rice-growing areas in the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and Thailand.

Agricultural biotechnology will help reduce hunger and malnutrition worldwide, particularly now that the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that the number of hungry people around the world has increased by 40 million. Dr. Rhodora Aldemita, senior program officer of the International Service for the Acquisition of AgriBiotech Applications (ISAAA), stressed that biotechnology is a most viable alternative system to boost yields of crops that have been genetically enhanced to provide consumers with adequate nutrients.

TWO Cabinet officials on Monday stressed the need to harness biotechnology for the country to boost food production, develop cheaper but effective medicines, and upgrade the production of commodities using higher-yielding crops with higher nutritional content. [...] ”If we do not use biotechnology for our benefit, we may just be left out by other governments and other societies that would harness it for their own good,” he told a group of scientists and biotechnology advocates.

”Waterproof’ versions of popular varieties of rice, which can withstand 2 weeks of complete submergence, have passed tests in farmers’ fields with flying colors. Several of these varieties are now close to official release by national and state seed certification agencies in Bangladesh and India, where farmers suffer major crop losses because of flooding of up to 4 million tons of rice per year. This is enough rice to feed 30 million people.