The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is investing PHP600 million for the nationwide implementation of Project Smarter Approaches to Reinvigorate Agriculture as an Industry (SARAI) in four years.

DOST Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. said the four-year project that began in the second half of 2025 is part of the overall big-ticket program of the agency under the smart agriculture initiative.

“Technologies are good only if they are applied. We want farmers to increase their profit and convince them that the way to go is smart technologies,” he said in an interview late Friday.

Solidum was in the region to launch various projects in Southern Leyte and open the regional hub for SARAI at the regional DOST office in Palo, Leyte.

The DOST has established SARAI hubs in all regions nationwide to strengthen project coordination with relevant national government agencies, local government units, and farmer cooperatives

“We need this hub since we really want to have local governments and farmers in the region understand the importance of SARAI,” he said.

The hub will provide data and advisories by offering site-specific crop advisories, weather forecasts, and pest or disease alerts to farmers; train farmers, local government units, and stakeholders on using smart agriculture tools, including drones, for data collection.

The facility will also localize technology by adopting national SARAI technologies, such as SPIDTECH (Smarter Pest Identification Technology), WAISS (Water Balance-Assisted Irrigation Scheduling System), and AWS (Automatic Weather System).

SPIDTECH features an insect pest and disease library, which acts as a comprehensive digital reference. It includes detailed information on pest and disease symptoms, life stages, management practices, and other relevant data.

WAISS is a technology that notifies farmers if the soil moisture content in their farm is nearing a critical level. It can advise farmers on when to start irrigating their crops, how long it will take, when to stop, and when to start again.

AWS is a device that provides real-time weather monitoring and uses site-specific historical data for crop modeling and forecasting.

Project SARAI is an action-research program, funded by the DOST – Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development, working towards reducing climate risks by providing agricultural stakeholders with site-specific crop advisories.

The priority crops include rice, corn, banana, coconut, coffee, cacao, sugarcane, soybean, and tomato. (PNA)