DA boosts supply of farm machinery

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) inked a technology transfer agreement with Val-Agri Machineries for the fabrication and commercialization of its developed machines.

With the agreement, PhilRice became the first agency to be issued a fairness opinion report facilitated by the Department of Science and Technology.

Under the Technology Transfer Act, technologies funded by the government are subject to a fairness opinion board review and report.

The agreement grants Val-Agri Machineries to manufacture the PhilRice-developed micro tiller, laboy tiller, reversible flatbed dryer and seed cleaner, which can reduce farm expenses on land preparation and post-harvest activities.

Of the technologies, micro tiller is a lightweight equipment used for tilling small sized paddies, while laboy tiller is intended for land preparation particularly for puddling soil with deep hardened depth.

On the other hand, reversible dryers are a batch type mechanical dryer used to dry grains by introducing heated air at the bottom layer of the grains and then reversing the flow of the heated air at the later part of the drying process.

Meanwhile, seed cleaner is used to remove foreign materials from the seed mass.