2021 marks the full operationalization of the Provincial Agriculturist’s Office Tissue Culture Laboratory located at the Provincial Demo Farm. With focus on banana micropropagation, the laboratory has so far produced more than 1,600 bottles of banana subcultures since it began actual operations in March 2021. The laboratory started to operate with only 20 bottles of banana subcultures in partnership with Mindoro State University and about 50 banana suckers sourced in banana plantations in Victoria and Naujan.

In a couple of months, these subcultures can produce more than one thousand banana plantlets taking into considerations contaminations and nursery survival rate. Tissue culture plantlets can be produced in large quantities in a short period of time unlike conventional banana planting materials such as suckers and corms. More importantly tissue cultured banana can produce disease-free seedlings and they grow and flower more uniformly.

To ensure its sustained operations, PAgO has four personnel assigned at the facility. Ms. Manilyn Albania, PAgO Agricultural Technologist supervises the daily operations. In 2019 they underwent an intensive training on micropropagation, disease indexing and package of technology for banana production at the Institute of Plant Breeding, University of the Philippines – Los Baños.

The establishment of the facility was made possible thru funds from the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) under its Performance Challenge Fund (PCF) and from the Department of Agriculture (DA-MIMAROPA) which provided some of the equipment and the initial laboratory supplies. PAgO’s tissue-culture laboratory is one of the three tissue-culture facilities in Oriental Mindoro, the other facilities are maintained by Mindoro State University and DA.

With the regular operations of the tissue-culture laboratory, PAgO along with MinSU and DA-MIMAROPA will be in better position to serve the banana farmers in the province through enhanced access and availability of high-quality banana planting materials.