Father of Nematology gets Magsaysay Award

“There are no barren soils,

only barren minds.”

    Taking this wisdom from his father to heart, Dr. Romulo Davide will receive on August 31 the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award for pioneering work in agriculture.

    “With the tools of science and a great reserve of social empathy,” the Magsaysay Awards observe, Davide's “steadfast passion” placed “the power and discipline of science in the hands of Filipino farmers, who have consequently multiplied their yields, created productive farming communities and rediscovered the dignity of their labor.”

    Davide started in 1994 the Farmer-Scientists Training Program in the mountain village of Colawin, Cebu, where he was born to a poor family.

    The “farmer-scientists” were taught to experiment on how to increase production. As a result, corn farmers increased their incomes with yields six to 12 times higher. The approach, since adopted by the Department of Agriculture, is now practiced in 20 provinces.

    It increased the annual income of farmers by more than 100 percent, Davide told ScienceNewsPhilippines. However, he said many farmers remain “underproductive, poor and hungry.”

Image-grab of official invitation to the Ramon Magsaysay Awardees Lecture Series.

    Very little science-based information reaches upland farmers, for example, who still plant low-yield corn when there are high-yielding varieties available, he said.

    Davide, now 78 and Professor Emeritus at the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), who continues to be a teacher, was a scientist-researcher.

    His discovery of nematode-trapping fungi (P. lilacinus and P. oxalicum) led to the development of the first Philippine biological control used against nematode pests attacking vegetables, banana, potato, citrus, pineapple, rice and other crops.

    The natural control consists of a spore concentrate of the fungus Paecilomyces lilacinus isolated from Philippine soil. Davide and his associates at UPLB commercialized the practical substitute for highly toxic and expensive chemical pesticides. It is now manufactured in Germany and marketed in Europe, South America and elsewhere.

    For his many years of teaching and groundbreaking research on nematode pests that destroy crops, Davide is recognized as the country's Father of Plant Nematology, the scientific discipline concerned with the study of nematodes, or roundworms.

    Davide was a four-time Professorial Chairholder at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) where he delivered research papers on the impact of nematology on Philippines crop production; recent advances in the cultural and biological control of nematodes; biological control technology for nematodes; and biological control of plant disease: progress and constraints in the Philippines and other countries.

    SEARCA's Professorial Chair Program, started in 1974, recognizes highly competent university faculty and research staff for excellence in their respective fields. It aims to maintain a strong faculty and SEARCA’s capability to successfully pursue its programs of graduate study and research, specialist training and advisory and consulting services for Southeast Asia.

    Davide, formerly the director of the National Crop Protection Center, received a degree in agriculture, major in plant pathology (1957), UPLB; Master of Science in plant pathology (1962), Oklahoma State University; and doctorate in nematology-plant pathology (1965), North Carolina State University. sciencenewsphilippines@gmail.com