January 13, 2026

 

Regional hub in Eastern Visayas, Philippines, to drive farm productivity and food security

 

The Philippines' Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is putting up a regional hub for "Project Smarter Approaches to Reinvigorate Agriculture as an Industry" (SARAI) in Eastern Visayas to boost farm productivity and food security.

 

The DOST regional office in this town will host the hub meant to localise and deploy climate-resilient tools for improved food security across the country, said DOST Regional Director John Glenn Ocaña in an interview on January 5.

 

Science and Technology Secretary Renato Solidum will lead the opening on January 22, 2026, with other key officials from the agency's main office.

 

"The regional hub is a center where all the actions for SARAI will emanate from," Ocaña told the Philippine News Agency. "All agriculture data from LGUs will be processed in the hub for better decision-making,"

 

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 localise technology by adapting national SARAI technologies like  Smarter Pest Identification Technology (SPIDTECH), Water Balance-Assisted Irrigation Scheduling System (WAISS) and Automatic Weather System (AWS).

 

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 programme, 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