In Spite of Low Prices PROVEN CLONE GIVES HOPE TO PHILIPPINE RUBBER FARMERS

By Manny Pinol

In spite of the very low prices of natural rubber which plunged from a very high P90 to only P25 per kilo now, hope for a more profitable rubber tree farming shines for North Cotabato farmers, thanks to the diligence and focus of a retired police colonel who is a true-blooded farmer.

Retired police colonel Pat Pinol, the eldest among us 11 Pinol brothers and a former British Royal Marines Commando, has painstakingly recorded the latex production performance of at least 100 rubber trees which he planted in his two homelots in Kidapawan City and in our village in Nueva Vida, M’lang.

The seedlings which turned out to be prolific rubber trees actually came from my nursery in my farm in Paco, Kidapawan City six or seven years ago.

They were among the budded rubber seedlings out of the RRIM Series 2000 which I propagated in my nursery from clonal materials which were brought in from Malaysia by a friend.

The seedlings were actually strewn around because they had busted plastic bags and seeing the abandoned budded rubber sticks, Col. Pat picked up about 200 of them and planted these in his two homelots.

He personally took care of the trees he planted and did the tapping himself when the girth of trunks reached the prescribed circumference of 18 inches.

That was when Col. Pat noticed that about 100 of the trees with similar bark color and texture and robust trunks were outperforming the other trees.

He started to patiently record the latex production of the trees which were tapped every other day, or 15 days a month and what came out of his record book astounded him and me.

Tapped early in the morning, the trees would produce latex up to late afternoon filling the plastic cup after two or three tapping sessions and yielding an average of 127 grams per tapping day.

Based on the recorded and validated average production of the trees per tapping day, he came up with these staggering figures:

– Average production per tapping day – 126 grams or .126 kilo;

– Average yield per tree tapped 15 days in 1 month – 1.9 kilos

– Average latex yield per tree per year – 22.8 kilos

Assuming that an hectare of rubber farm is planted with 555 rubber trees of this clone, the average annual production per hectare is at least 12,654 kilos.

Even with the very low price of P25 per kilo of raw cuplumps, each hectare will earn about P316,350 per year for a rubber farmer.

That’s at P25. Imagine how much a rubber farmer will earn if the price of cuplumps would go up to P50 per kilo.

The problem, however, is since the seedlings Col. Pat gathered from my nursery were all mixed up, we still could not identify which of the RRIM Series 2000 clones are performing well, except that the prolific trees all have similar bark colors and texture and same girth growth rate.

Encouraged by this development, I have decided to restart our rubber nursery operations with the aim of using clonal materials from the prolific rubber trees in producing rubber seedlings.

Last Friday, I made the rounds of the boundaries of my farm in Paco, Kidapawan City where I planted about 800 rubber seedlings which were left over when I stopped the nursery operations 5 years ago.

What caught my attention were several newly-opened rubber trees which looked similar to those which Col. Pat identified as prolific latex producers, showing impressive latex production.

Just like what Col. Pat did, we will carefully record the performance of these trees in latex production and use them as sources for clonal materials for our rubber seedlings which will be made available to farmers by next year.

Deep inside me, I felt blessed that in the midst of seemingly desperate situation of rubber farmers who are suffering from the very low prices of rubber cuplumps, a glimmer of hope beckons in the horizon.

The relief will not be immediate and but it will certainly come.

Once again it is proven: “When God closes doors, He opens windows.”

(Photos show Col. Pat and one of the prolific rubber trees in his farm; my son Imman show the impressive latex production of a tree in my Paco farm after only two tappings.)