Virus-free garlic plants can now be produced

Virus-free planting materials of garlic can now be produced.

Making this possible is a new technology developed by researchers of the UPLB Institute of Plant Breeding – Drs. Lilian Pateña, Lolita Dolores, Alice Bariring, Ramon Barba, Erhard Barg, and Sylvia Green. The research project was funded by the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR).

Garlic is one of the most economically important crops in the Philippines, with the Ilocos and Central Luzon as the top producers.

The yield, however, is still low owing to the conventional means of propagation that uses single cloves. This method exposes the crop to viral infections and pests and diseases that causes yield loss by about 70 percent.

The IPB research project aimed to correct the situation. The IPB technique actually was an improvement of the technology developed by the Asian Vegetable Network (AVNET) years back.

The new technology is a combination of pretreatment and tissue-culture strategies to clean up the planting materials as means to eliminate the virus, reported BAR’s Ma. Lizbeth Baroña.

Virus-indexing to certify that the materials are virus-free and field planting to increase the number of materials for planting were performed.

The improved technique is now routinely used for production of certified virus-free planting materials of the Ilocos White, Mindoro, and Tan Bolter cultivars, BAR reported. – RAF