The Legazpi City Agriculture Office (CAO) on Tuesday started distributing at least 1,000 bags of Rc 222 certified palay seedlings to farmer beneficiaries listed in the Registry System for Basic Sector in Agriculture (RSBSA) of the Department of Agriculture (DA), in time for their planting this coming wet months.

CAO chief Sheila Nas said the seedlings came from the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) as part of DA’s Rice Competitive Enhancement Fund (RCEF) program intended to augment the needs of farmers for quality palay seedlings.

Nas said the seedlings would be distributed to 810 farmer beneficiaries. Farmers with at least one hectare of rice field will receive two bags of seedlings each.

“We will again request PhilRice for additional palay seeds to make sure that all the 2,677 rice farmers will benefit from the free palay seedlings to be planted in more than 1,400 hectares, as some 200 hectares have already been planted hybrid rice,” she said.

Nas said her office will be handing over the seedling bags to the farmers individually so that they could be interviewed and their information uploaded for documentation to the PhilRice website.

PhilRice is a DA-attached agency mandated to help develop high-yielding and cost-reducing technologies that will enable farmers to produce a good harvest.

Rc 222 is a variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) which yields an average of 90 bags per hectare.

“I am very grateful to PhilRice for selecting our farmers as recipients of these free palay seedlings that would reduce their expenses this planting season,” Nas said.

She noted that Mayor Noel E. Rosal has given the farmers free fertilizer as the counterpart of the city government.

Recently, five farmers’ associations with an estimated 1,700 members received transplanters from DA as part of the farm mechanization program under the RCEF. (PNA)