GREENER BEDROCK: Plant breeding remains vital to food security, says agri sector

Trojan Rey Genotiva

As the reality of food insecurity and escalating  hunger rates in the country leave millions of impoverished Filipinos in the murk, a steadfast push from the agricultural community dawns on innovative crop production; a promise of bountiful production and sustainability.

Progressive agriculture in the country has been spearheaded by the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB),  where its continuous successful innovations have been felt across the globe, importantly developing varieties of crops with improved productivity and quality traits through plant breeding.

Plant breeding, documented to pre-exist with the very beginnings of agriculture, is a process of crossing two plants, each with its desired qualities, to produce an offspring sharing specific characteristics of the two parent plants called cultivated variety or cultivar.

“Through enhancing these plant breeding techniques, the new plant varieties can significantly reduce hunger, increase income, and make farming more resilient to future climate and economic shocks,” said Department of Science and Technology (DOST) secretary Renato U. Solidum Jr. 

Cultivars as food response

Noting how rice is a staple food that constitutes 40 percent of the Filipino diet, the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice) has long been breeding rice varieties, aiming to enhance micronutrients and  maximize profit and yield.

Among many efforts of the sector in incorporating the cultivars in local plates are the recent zinc-rich rice varieties launched by the  PhilRice, named National Seed Industry Council Rice (NSIC Rc) 460 and NSIC Rc 648, in Negros Occidental to address malnutrition.

“These are not just high-yielding varieties, but they also deliver nutritional benefits that could significantly reduce stunting rates,” said Dr. Mallikarjuna Swamy, lead breeder for high-zinc rice at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). 

Swamy added how the zinc-rich rice will rewrite the nutrition narrative in a country where about three of 10 children under five are stunted, and millions live with hidden hunger.

On top of the biofortified rice, PhilRice has also introduced climate-ready rice varieties for local cultivation and rice varieties with low glycemic indexes (GI) targeted to help manage blood sugar levels.

Aside from rice varieties, DA sees the potential of cultivars in strengthening the mango industry, notably: the Mangoming mango, known for its large size that yields 100 kilograms every season and holds the current Guinness record for heaviest mango recorded; and the Farrales mango variety that yields 200 kilograms every season and is resistant to mango fruit flies.

Tech-driven plant breeding 

As much as plant breeding is known for being historically ancient, scientists have been able to integrate modern gene-editing technologies in the process, primarily Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), with enzymes acting as molecular scissors for cutting deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) at a specific location, offering precise, simple, and versatile genetic manipulation.

According to DOST and the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) Inc., the use of genetic engineering mechanisms has changed agricultural organisms in ways faster than selective breeding, hybridization, mutation breeding, and marker-assisted selection.

“New plant breeding techniques enable us to accelerate the development of crop varieties as compared to conventional breeding, they open up opportunities to further improve our approach in agriculture,“ said  former DOST secretary Fortunato de la Peña. 

In line with accelerating crop varieties development, de la Peña added the cultivars can now better adapt to certain climates and be more resistant to changing environmental conditions, leading to better chances of survival in the field and more productive harvests.

Tug of commercialization

While the country’s agri-biotech efforts in plant breeding stand significant, the challenge of commercializing these innovations still remains. Low research and development funding and regulatory hurdles are among the primary reasons that have kept their widespread use. 

This is while the 2025 Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed a hunger rate in the country reaching 27.2 percent, its highest rate since the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, calling for a long-term master plan to safeguard food supply. 

“We need a stronger market pull that ensures the innovations we generate do not remain in laboratories or journals but reach the people on the ground,” said Solidum.

Solidum added, research outputs that address issues only become beneficial to the communities they serve once they are tangible and effectively implemented.

Amid difficulties faced by the science community in uprooting food insecurity through their significant innovations, cultivars continue to serve as the green bedrock in addressing the worsening food crisis for millions of Filipinos.