The Ifugao Provincial Agricultural and Environment and Natural Resources Office (Paenro) conducted a free hands-on demo on budding or grafting to advocate and promote the techniques in backyard gardening.
Jamie Gallangi, Officer-In-Charge of the Bahawit Nursery of Paenro, lectured about the basics of budding and discussed the kinds and tools used in the craft.
He said budding is a kind of asexual rep-roduction in which a new individual deve-lops from some generative anatomical point of the parent organism or the growing of a plant from a part of a parent organism.
Gallangi shared the three common kinds of budding – shed budding that includes T-budding and inverted-T budding, chip budding, and patch budding.
The workshop is a continuous effort of Paenro to encourage more individuals to practice and appreciate budding despite the slow response from the community.
“We have been teaching for a long time and don’t see anyone doing it. Despite this, we still continue teaching it because some, or even only one (adopting the practice), it is still good,” Gallangi said.
He said it is more assured for a plant to grow a prototype in budding rather than to start from planting seeds.
Gallangi said they also engage the youth in grafting and budding since it is a learnable skill and can be a source of income for students.
Dr. Clark Patrick Namingit, Veterina-rian II and one of the participants, said the demo enriched his knowledge about budding.
He said budding is one of his interests and is aligned with his work at the Agricultural Office.
There are various nurseries in the municipality, one of which is the Bahawit Nursery where the plants that were used in the demo came from. It is an accredited nursery that concentrates on fruit trees, educates interested individuals, and sells affordable fruit trees.
Bahawit Nursery is also the source of students and organizations whenever it is needed for their activities.
The Paenro leads the expansion of agricultural practices to encourage the people of Ifugao to diversify their farming practice. – Jurjen K. Sublino
