Philippine genebank gains 5M, loses 36M

In a tragic twist of events, the Philippines’ largest genebank was gutted by fire Saturday, 28 January 2012, a few months after it began upgrading its facilities damaged by Typhoon Milenyo 6 years ago.

The National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory (NPGRL) in Los Banos Laguna, Philippines has implemented major improvements to the genebank following a PHP 5 million grant (USD 120,000)  from the Department of Agriculture to boost  rehabilitation efforts.

As the upgrade project comes to a close in April this year, the genebank operators adapted the building’s three transformers to handle increased power.  The next morning power failed and when it came back on the fire started.  Faulty wiring is suspected to be the cause of fire.

The fire, lasting for several hours, gobbled the whole second floor which houses the molecular and cytological characterization laboratories, the in vitro conservation unit and the documentation unit, library and reseach staff offices.

All hard copies of publications and documentation files were lost as well as some electronic data. The biggest damage is said to be in the in vitro laboratory which lost hundreds of duplicate collections of banana, taro, sweet potato and yams. The first floor also experienced some flooding damage from the fire engines which affected chemicals and some equipment in the molecular laboratories.

All in all, the damage is estimated at PHP 36 million (USD 860,000 ).

There were no reported casualties from the fire.

Projects to continue running

With limited resources at hand, the genebank staff is faced with a daunting task of rehabilitating the country’s principal genebank, and at the same time running some 30 projects.

More than 45,000 accessions of 600 agricultural crop species and their relatives such as corn, mungbean, tomato, eggplant, yardlong bean, cowpea, banana and root crops are kept at the NPGRL which holds the largest germplasm collection in Southeast Asia.

Aside from safeguarding this collection, the genebank staff conducts research on the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity. They have also introduced and evaluated improved and superior landraces of banana and identified cultivars that have good potential in terms of yield and acceptability, among their many other accomplishments.

The staff remains optimistic despite the tremendous amount of work that lies ahead.

“This is not the first time that the genebank has been battered, but it will get up on its feet to serve its purpose of making sure that future generations benefit from our rich crop diversity”, comments Prof Teresita Borromeo, one of the genebank’s researchers. “But to achieve this we will need some help.”

Contact  NPGRL

If you would like to donate or contact NPGRL, please email thborromeo@yahoo.com