Business Potential for Agricultural Biotechnology - Asian Productivity ...

Business Potential for Agricultural Biotechnology Products
erratic. Of an average volume of 109,525 mt per year, 92% goes to domestic consumption as
food, 6% is processed/wasted, and only 2% is exported (Payot, 2005).
Table 6. Papaya Cultivars/Strains, Philippines
Cultivars/ Weight Grown in Principal Market PRSV
strains
use
resistance
Solo About 0.45 kg Large farms Dessert Export and Susceptible
in Mindanao fruit domestic
Cavite Special More than 3 kg In Cavite and Dessert Domestic Susceptible
neighboring
provinces
fruit
Legaspi Special More than 3 kg In Legaspi Dessert Domestic Susceptible
(Albay) and
neighboring
provinces
fruit
Morado – In Mindanao Canning Export Susceptible
DMPI (devel- – In Mindanao Canned Export Susceptible
oped by Del
tropical
Monte Philip-
fruit
pines, Inc.)
cocktail
Hybrid Sinta 1.2–2 kg In Luzon Dessert Domestic Moderately
(released by
UPLB–IPB in
1995)
fruit
resistant
Source: Tabulated from Payot, 2005
In 1984, the papaya ringspot virus (PRSV) outbreak created havoc in the flourishing
papaya industry. PRSV reduces total production by 35%–41% and reduces yield by as much as
90%–100%. Once an area has been infested, PRSV is there to stay: no eradication effort yet has
been successful. All the Philippine cultivars/strains are susceptible to PRSV except for Sinta,
which is moderately resistant. Biotechnology’s contribution is to produce PRSV-resistant papaya,
developed locally, although the gene construct is imported, with PCARRD holding the license. It
is currently undergoing contained field testing and is set to be commercialized by 2007. Public
acceptance of this GMO, however, promises to be a tough challenge.
Laude (2002) showed that cash costs comprise the bulk of production costs (75%);
chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides (36%) and hired labor (35%) contributed 71%.
Varying price and cost-competitiveness of the GM papaya over the non-GM papaya were also
reported. Using export parity prices, the analysis revealed greater-than-one price ratios for Solo
GMO, non-GMO, and Sinta papaya, which implies that these fruits are price-competitive on the
export market. Moreover, the non-GMO Solo papaya appears to be more price-competitive by
15% over the GMO Solo and the non-GMO Sinta (Table 7). Laude observed that there was
unfortunately bias in the world market against the GMO papaya. In fact, the price ascribed to the
GMO papaya is almost half that of a non-GMO papaya’s border price. On the other hand, a nontransgenic
Sinta papaya has about the same border price as that of a Solo GMO. Despite this, the
Sinta papaya can still obtain a better price when exported than when sold locally, that is, if the
export market reacts positively to Sinta.
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