Month: June 2012

The Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) has once again showed its active support to the Philippine Society of Animal Science (PSAS) as it hosted the second leg of the latter’s yearly lecture series held June 1 at the PCC national headquarters office.

The activity was participated in by around 100 individuals, researchers, and veterinarians from PCC, University of the Philippines-Los Baños, Pampanga Agricultural College, Isabela State University, Central Luzon State University and technical staff from Ilocos Sur, Zambales, and Department of Agriculture-Regional Field Units, and representatives from the 13 regional centers of PCC.

In line with its purpose of promoting the betterment of the animal industry, the yearly lecture series hopes to provide relevant lecture-presentations that would be of interest and benefit to the various stakeholders of the country’s livestock sector.

This year, PSAS lecture series carries the theme, “The Philippine Swine Industry: The Challenges We Face Today” and has chosen Dr. Arturo T. Calud, a veterinarian and a swine consultant, as this year’s honoree.

During the lecture series, Dr. Wilfredo Resoso, general manager of the Prime Veterinary Philippines, Incorporated, underscored the vital role of the application of biotechnology in improving the swine industry in terms of breeding and production performance.

Dr. Karlo Romano Gicana, director of the veterinary teaching hospital of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños (CVM-UPLB), on the other hand, discussed the three-pillar approach (i.e. collaboration among the industry, government, and the university) toward a more effective disease monitoring and surveillance.  

In the afternoon of the same day, Dr. Jezie Acorda, a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine in UPLB and Dr. Veneranda Magpantay of the Animal and Dairy Sciences Cluster in UPLB, discussed the effective ways of writing scientific articles for publication and designing animal science and veterinary researches, respectively.

Practicing the culture of scientific inquiry in producing researches which directly impacts on the institution’s mandate as a whole is indispensable.

This was reiterated by Dr. Libertado Cruz, Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) executive director, during the agency’s annual R&D In-house Review held last May 29-30.

PCC, one of the government institutions that grew from a mere research project, continually focuses attention in strengthening its research capabilities in meeting its mandates.

“This activity is just a reiteration of the value of the scientific method of inquiry and, hopefully, it will continue in sustaining the efforts toward addressing the identified issues in a scientific way,” Dr. Cruz said.

Dr. Cruz also highlighted the importance of human capacitation.

He put it succinctly this way: “The most important thing is not the laboratory or the building or the equipment. The most important thing is the human resource and we want to put emphasis in capacitating our people.”

The annual R&D in-house review serves as a monitoring and evaluation tool that ensures alignment of R&D efforts to the R&D agenda of the agency.

It is also aimed at recognizing the research activities done by the pool of researchers and scientists of PCC in its continuous quest to understand the dynamics of and polish solutions for genetic improvement, improved animal health and nutrition, buffalo-based enterprises, and socio-economic issues that are related to program implementation.

In the last review, 27 papers were presented of which 15 were completed studies. This number includes the student thesis of veterinary students of Central Luzon State University (CLSU) whose studies are related to buffalo’s animal health and reproduction.

Other areas covered included genetic resource conservation and improvement, feeding and production system, value-adding or enterprise development, and socio-economics and policy.

The review also aimed to evaluate the completed and on-going research activities as to their merits, problems, limitations, and opportunities for improvement; to serve as a venue for sharing research results with the R&D community; to function as a motivating tool for researchers to strengthen their interest in conducting pertinent researches in line with the agency’s mandate; and to give due recognition to those individuals who excelled in their research endeavors.

Three types of awards were given during the in-house review.

The study titled, “Detection of Caprine Arthritis-Encephalitis Virus from Goats Using Competitive ELISA and Nested Polymerase Chain Reaction” by Justin Christian V. Gonzales of the College of Veterinary Medicine in Central Luzon State University (CLSU) garnered the “Best Paper for Completed Research (Undergraduate Thesis)” award.

On the other hand, the studies “Development of a Sustainable Village-Based Artificial Insemination System: The VBAIT Approach” of PCC at Mariano Marcos State University and the “Development of animal health and management protocol for grazing buffaloes: Improving reproductive performance in dairy buffaloes through uterine betadine flushing and use of teaser bull” of PCC at Ubay Stock Farm both garnered the “Best Papers for Completed Research (PCC researches)” award.

Prof. Metilde Melicent Santos-Recto of CLSU was awarded the “Best Presenter”.

Dr. Eric P. Palacpac, R&D National Coordinator, underscored the importance of being critical in the technical aspects of writing a paper.

Specifically, he emphasized the proper composition of the literature review saying that “it is very important in every research as a basis of any new intervention and/or research objectives.”

Dr. Palacpac also appealed to the researchers to come up with relevant studies that will be of practical use to the farmers and to the livestock industry.