PSU establishes ‘clonal’ nursery

STA. MARIA, Pangasinan, Philippines -— The Pangasinan State University (PSU) campus in this town in partnership with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has established a clonal nursery, which is a first in Region 1, to propagate trees near extinction, aimed to copy the exact original individual tree.

Professor Simeon Cabansag, campus executive director of PSU Sta. Maria campus, told local newsmen the other day that the DENR gave P3.5 million for the establishment of the clonal nursery last year.

“(Ours) is the first in Region 1 except the one in Mangatarem town but as far as the planting of trees in our environment involving state universities and colleges in the Philippines, we are number one here in Region 1,“ he said.

The cloning is done inside a laboratory built on almost a hectare of lot at the PSU campus here.

 â€œWhat is needed is only .5 hectare for hedge garden. We get a stem of the plant and in the laboratory are growth hormones and others, then it is placed in growth chamber that takes about two weeks’ time until a new growth comes out,” he added.

In the hedge garden, trees are not allowed to grow big, say three feet only, because they get cuttings, soaked overnight in growth hormone then put in a growth chamber. Roots come out after a week then transferred to plastic bags.

But these are not ordinary plants but forest trees already considered as near extinction like molave, apitong, red lauan, kamagong, among others, he added.

Forest trees have seeds that fall down and in a week’s time that the seeds fell but nothing grows out, it becomes difficult to propagate so the only thing to do is cloning,  Cabansag said.

He said their contract with the DENR is to produce 60,000 forest tree seedlings through their clonal nursery that would be turned over to them.