Powering up strawberries

THE DILEMMA of strawberry farmers

in Benguet is not a hopeless case

after all. A farm enthusiast has found

a way to stop a disease that has

afflicted strawberry fields for two decades now.

Bank and insurance executive Alfonso Puyat, who doubles as

an agricultural expert, conducted an experiment with a local

farmer and found that a rooting hormone prevents strawberries

from shrinking and from getting coated with a powdery black

substance.

''This is the Viagra for strawberries,'' Puyat said after a visit to an

experimental site in La Trinidad town.

Strawberry plants treated with

alpha naphthalene acetic acid

or Anaa, have more robust

rooting hormones. Its fruits are

bigger and shiny, making these

stand out among the plant's

vibrant leaves.

The yield has also

considerably skyrocketed by

as much as 1,005 percent.

Puyat, along with farmer Jenny

Contada, made three experiments.

On the average, a 1 x 10-square meter strawberry plot produces

276.67 grams of marketable fruits, even when only 1 milliliter of

Anaa is applied.

In the second experiment, Puyat tried mixing 3 ml of Anaa with

20 grams of fungicide and found that the yield per plot has

doubled to 516.67 grams or an 812-percent increase.

When he mixed 7 ml of Anaa with 20 ml of Miracle Booster, a

foliar fertilizer, the yield rose to 626.67 grams per plot.

Untreated plots yielded only 56.67 grams of marketable

strawberry fields on the average.

''Remarkable is an understatement for the results we got, most

especially since the dosage we used is the lowest that farmers

use in treating the fungus that causes the disease,'' Puyat said.

The plot treated with Anaa also produced the lowest number of

non-marketable fruits at 110 grams as compared to Anaa plus

fungicide treatment (153.33 grams) and Anaa plus Miracle

Booster treatment which yielded 225 grams of non-marketable

yield.

On the average, the untreated plot produced the highest number

of non-marketable strawberries at 336.67 grams.

Besides, the strawberries are sweeter and crunchier.

''These are the sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted,'' Puyat

said as he popped a berry in his mouth.

Anaa is cheap and affordable by farmers. One-fourth liter of

Anaa is sold at P60 to P65 in major farm stores in La Trinidad.

How Anaa works

Anaa is a hormone which stimulates root growth. Puyat said

one of its components is the naphtha, a byproduct of oil

refineries.

At the Benguet State University, the substance is used to

hasten the rooting stage of plantlets or tissue-cultured plants. It

is the rooting medium used to mass produce Igorota and

Solibao, the two potato varieties developed by BSU.

''Anaa is often used in orchids or in other plants that have

difficulty or are slow in producing roots,'' Puyat said.

Anaa has never been known as a cure for the soft rot of

strawberries.

Puyat admitted that he does not know how Anaa works but he

offered two theories to explain its power to cure strawberry rot.

The first is that Anaa enhances rooting and the plant becomes

more immune to the disease.

''The fungi are soil-borne and perhaps damage the plant's roots.

Anaa strengthens the plant's roots and enables them to absorb

enough nutrients, as well as resist the fungal attack,'' Puyat said.

His second theory is that Anaa makes the fungicide or the foliar

fertilizer work faster.

''Perhaps, Anaa and the fungicide or foliar fertilizer develops a

synergy, enabling the plant to resist the fungi,'' he said.

Puyat decided to experiment on the effects of Anaa on

strawberry soft rot, the disease that has destroyed numerous

strawberries in Benguet due to early rains, when he read in the

Inquirer about how the fungal attack has extensively damaged

strawberry farms.

''This cannot be. This is impossible,'' was Puyat's reaction to the

Inquirer story.

Immediately, he contacted a plant pathologist at the BSU and

Contada to try the substance. Experimentation started the next

day.

Puyat knew of the effects of Anaa as he used the substance in

combination with a weed killer in 1974 to control root rot in

ginger plant.

The weed killer's dosage was the lowest at 20 grams but still, the

cocktail was proven to be effective.

''I can't believe that for more than 25 years, I possessed the cure

for this decades-old strawberry disease,'' Puyat said.

With his experiments, Puyat has not come across any negative

effect of Anaa on plants.

But a plant pathologist at BSU cautioned that applying large

dosages of Anaa would allow the plant to concentrate more in

increasing its number of leaves and would forget to fruit.

Disease killer

Farmers have observed the changes in Contada's strawberry

fields and have pestered her to share her secret.

Compared to Contada's fields, most of the farmers' strawberry

plants show brown and fewer leaves, and deformed and dull

fruits.

Strawberries have exhibited signs of rotting and molding due to

the early rains. Strawberry specialists at the BSU explained that

the fungi that cause these abnormalities are encouraged to do

their destructive activities due to increased moisture.

That is the reason strawberry production in Benguet stops

when the rainy season starts. But with Anaa, it is expected that

production will continue until July after strawberry production

peaked in February.

The farm owners said they will be using Anaa in their

strawberry fields soon.

Puyat is also thinking of using the substance to treat the major

diseases afflicting Cordillera vegetables like cabbage root rot,

the viral attack in sayote, and the two major diseases of potato.

He also plans to try out the substance to stop the tomato

disease plaguing plantations in Malaybalay, Bukidnon.

''The prospects of using Anaa to abate the destruction caused

by these major diseases are very promising,'' he said.