TACLOBAN CITY – The Division of Science and Know-how (DOST) is investing P600 million for the nationwide implementation of Challenge Smarter Approaches to Reinvigorate Agriculture as an Business (SARAI) in 4 years.
DOST Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. mentioned the four-year undertaking that started within the second half of 2025 is a part of the general big-ticket program of the company underneath the sensible agriculture initiative.
“Applied sciences are good provided that they’re utilized. We wish farmers to extend their revenue and persuade them that the best way to go is sensible applied sciences,” he mentioned in an interview late Friday.
Solidum was within the area to launch varied tasks in Southern Leyte and open the regional hub for SARAI on the regional DOST workplace in Palo, Leyte.
The DOST has established SARAI hubs in all areas nationwide to strengthen undertaking coordination with related nationwide authorities companies, native authorities models, and farmer cooperatives
“We want this hub since we actually wish to have native governments and farmers within the area perceive the significance of SARAI,” he mentioned.
The hub will present information and advisories by providing site-specific crop advisories, climate forecasts, and pest or illness alerts to farmers; practice farmers, native authorities models, and stakeholders on utilizing sensible agriculture instruments, together with drones, for information assortment.
The ability may also localize expertise by adopting nationwide SARAI applied sciences, resembling SPIDTECH (Smarter Pest Identification Know-how), WAISS (Water Stability-Assisted Irrigation Scheduling System), and AWS (Computerized Climate System).
SPIDTECH options an insect pest and illness library, which acts as a complete digital reference. It contains detailed info on pest and illness signs, life phases, administration practices, and different related information.
WAISS is a expertise that notifies farmers if the soil moisture content material of their farm is nearing a vital degree. It may possibly advise farmers on when to begin irrigating their crops, how lengthy it should take, when to cease, and when to begin once more.
AWS is a tool that gives real-time climate monitoring and makes use of site-specific historic information for crop modeling and forecasting.
Challenge SARAI is an action-research program, funded by the DOST – Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Pure Assets Analysis and Growth, working in direction of lowering local weather dangers by offering agricultural stakeholders with site-specific crop advisories.
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The precedence crops embrace rice, corn, banana, coconut, espresso, cacao, sugarcane, soybean, and tomato.
