A seedling mass production facility for the specialty food makapuno was put up in Tiaong, Quezon to aid in making the Philippines become world’s biggest makapuno producer.
This facility integrates research, laboratory, and mass propagation of seedlings in one center at the Quezon Agricultural Experimental Station (QAES).
The Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR) has funded the upgrading of the Embryo Culture Facility (ECF) that is already housed within QAES. It aims to supply Makapuno seedlings to Calabarzon—Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon.
The project, for which P4.9 million has been released, will last up to December 2015.
“Our aim is to lower the cost of planting materials so our farmers will be encouraged to plant it. Makapuno is one product where (DA) Secretary (Proceso) Alcala sees an opportunity for us to be the biggest producer in the world,” said BAR Director Nicomedes P. Eleazar.
The target is to lower cost by around 50 percent from P600 per seedling supplied by a lone private producer in Calabarzon.
Erlene Concibido-Manohar, Project Development Officer of Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), who also leads the project, said a huge market awaits the country’s makapuno production.
“There is a gap of 3.99 million kilos of makapuno meat per year to address the demand of food processors internationally. In the Philippines itself, Nestle, Magnolia, and Selecta need 4.061 million kilos of makapuno meat for their ice cream production,” according to Manohar.
The Philippines already exports makapuno to Japan and the United States as a finished product, usually as a dessert in bottled form.
However, without embryo culture and related technologies and best practices in seedlings mass production, it may just fall behind Thailand which is already planting makapuno massively.
Makapuno is just an abnormality of the coconut that comes out only by up to 20 percent chance in a normal coconut tree. This means that out of 20 nuts in a harvest, only a maximum of four nuts may turn out to be a makapuno, a kind of coconut meat that has tender and tasty flesh. Because of this defect, makapuno nuts do not germinate.
To ensure increased production of makapuno purebreds, PCA has developed the use of isolated embryo from the nut of a makapuno-bearing palm, to produce seedlings.
Embryo culture technology, where the embryo is excised out of a mature makapuno nut and grown under ideal tissue culture conditions in this laboratory, will raise chances of producing increased number of makapuno seedlings.
Makapuno nuts are not commonly found in all trees, but their presence is more prevalent in Laguna and Quezon. Embryo culture can produce trees that yield 75 to 100 percent makapuno nuts or 17 to 20 nuts out of a harvest of 20 nuts.
The global ice cream industry needs an estimated 1.5 billion nuts to flavor 0.5 percent of 831 million gallons of ice cream, 52 million gallons of sherbet, and 82 million gallons of yogurt.
The ECF upgrading in Tiaong is expected to finally bring to reality the hope to raise Philippines’ makapuno production.
“This is a program that should have all the elements that can make our hope to raise makapuno production come true. It has a component for research, a growing of the embryos for seedling production, and we also put up a farmers’ training center in the area,” said Eleazar.
The establishment of the ECF will also explore the uses of galactomannan, a kind of gum that can be extracted from the whitish makapuno liquid endosperm. Galactomannan from the liquid endosperm is just thrown away as waste, as is the case of coconut water. The technology of its extraction is being perfected. The diverse uses of galactomannan as extender or thickener, gelling agent, emulsifier, and food stabilizer are also being explored.
Galactomannan can also be made into a biodegradable film for use in wrapping candies, as in the edible wrapper in White Rabbit, and in fresh lumpia cover. It has other pharmaceutical and health care applications as biofilm for natural gauze for wound dressings, in moisturizers and hand and body lotion base.
For industrial or research applications, galactomannan may also be an inexpensive substitute to the costly agarose gels routinely used in DNA fingerprinting and molecular diagnostics, which was diligently explored by Dr. Maria Judith Rodriguez, a PCA researcher at the Albay Research Center.
As of 2006, it was estimated that there was a need to grow 121,483 embryo cultured makapuno seedlings to meet the demand for makapuno.
The ECF in QAES will be the first of such facility for Calabarzon. The other ECFs are in Davao, Zamboanga, Albay Research Center, Sta. Barbara in Pangasinan, and Indang, Cavite.
PCA plans to grow 500 embryos that can be a source of makapuno seedlings per cycle or over 11 months. However, success rate of this embryo growing has not yet been established so far and may go down to as low as 50 to 20 percent.
Makapuno is a widely demanded product used as a delicacy and as a special flavoring for cakes, ice cream, and confectioneries. Erlene Concibido-Manohar, PCA
