Propagating the Proven Clone BRAVEHEART FARM RESTARTS RUBBER NURSERY OPERATION By Manny Pinol Inspired by the results of a study on the productivity of a rubber clone planted by my brother, retired police colonel Pat Pinol, seven years ago, I have decided to restart the operations of a rubber nursery which I closed down a few years ago. The proven rubber clone, which we will temporarily label as PPC-MS2000, actually came from the same rubber nursery which I shut down a few years ago. (PPC-MS2000 stands for Pats Proven Clone Malaysian Series 2000.) Col. Pat saw several discarded budded rubber seedlings strewn around the nursery because the plastic bags which contained the seedlings were busted. He planted these in his two farm lots in Kidapawan City and Nueva Vida, Mlang. When he started tapping the trees, he discovered that about 100 of these were prolific producers and he carefully recorded the latex production per tapping day. The results of the study were very encouraging. The trees with similar bark colors produced an average of 1.9 kilos of cuplumps every month tapped every other day, a production which could give a farmer an annual income of at least P316,000 per hectare per year even at a very low price of P25 per kilo. With the help of a Malaysian agronomist, Col. Pat harvested clonal materials from the prolific rubber trees and developed a budwood nursery. With the availability of the clonal materials for PPC-MS2000, I have started preparing for the mass production of the proven clone. By next year, PPC-MS2000 planting materials will already be available to rubber farmers and hopefully this will contribute to the improvement of the rubber farmers income. (Photos show 1. fresh rubber seeds being prepared for germination; 2. rubber seed beds are being prepared using river sand as germination material; 3. workers filling plastic bags with soil in preparation for the germinated rubber seeds; 4. Col. Pat with his worker, Intsik, and his family posing in front of a PPC-MS2000 tree in his homelot in Nueva Vida.)
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 20:15:32 +0000
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