BUSINESS BITS

Changing Cagayan’s Culinary landscape
Paul Icamina

SANTIAGO, Isabela – Tilapia is fast changing the culinary landscape of Cagayan Valley .

Adobo, kilawin, paksiw, ihaw, steamed, with tausi, sweet sour, name it, the protein-packed fish is so popular that Dr. J. Ildefonso B. Costales Jr is coming out with “tilangit”, the dangit version of tilapia, and frozen vacuum-packed tilapia fillets.

Costales, a surgeon, owns the Palaisdaan Natin, one of the major suppliers of tilapia fingerlings in Isabela whose clients come all the way from Cagayan, Ifugao and Ilocos Norte.

“Our target is to raise farm production from 5 million fingerlings a month to 10 million within the year,” says Costales, who heads the Southern Isabela District Hospital.

“With more help from the Department of Science and Technology, we want to expand into food processing as soon as possible,” he says. “As we did in the past, we will tap DOST technology and other interventions to realize our target.”

After training and construction of ponds, concrete tanks and artificial incubator, DOST put in place the sex-reverse tilapia (SRT) technology at the Palaisdaan Natin in 2004. SRT produces all-male tilapias that weigh more and breed faster.

With DOST intervention, Costales has turned his 1.1-hectare tilapia hatchery in Barangay Nabbuan here into one of the major players in the region, producing 5 million fingerlings worth P2 million annually.

The good doctor also raises tilapia in a 2-hectare farm in Barangay Divisioria. All together, the two farms now earn P3.5 million each year, a significant increase from just P750,000 before the DOST-Consultancy for Agricultural Productivity Enhancement (CAPE) came along in 2002.

“Through DOST, nalaman ng mga tao ang hatchery namin,” Costales points out. “Because of its help, we more than doubled our harvests.”

Palaisdaan Natin is one of the many beneficiaries of CAPE, turning Isabela second only to Central Luzon as the country’s biggest producer of tilapia. It is also one of the major source of fingerlings in Northern Luzon .

“Bago ang intervention, parang Grade 1 kami noon,” says Daniel L. Domalanta, farm manager. “Now we produce 5 million fingerlings every month or so.”

The peak demand for tilapia fingerlings is during summer, from May to July, when the National Irrigation Administration releases more water to farmers, including tilapia growers.

In Santiago alone, tilapia is grown in some 64 hectares of fishponds. Farmers find tilapia attractive because a 1-hectare farm generates an impressive 1.5 return-on –investment in just one year. Indeed, because tilapia earns three times compared to rice, many farmers have converted their paddy fields into fishponds.

In this land-locked province, even increased harvest has not dampened the price of tilapia which remains around P70 (farm gate) to P80 (retail) per kilo. “Hindi bumabagsak ang presyo dahil malaki ang demand,” says Domalanta. For Gilbert Carbellado, Palaisdaan Natin technician, breeding fingerlings seems simple enough.

In a 1,000-square-meter pond, for example, 1,000 female tilapias are paired with 400 males for 15 days. Each female produces about 300 eggs, and together they hatch about 300,000 eggs after 10 days.

These eggs are collected and put in artificial incubators for five days to hatch; they are not fed at all. This conditions them to SRT treatment when they are transferred after five days into nets in ponds where they are fed with SRT feeds that transforms almost all of them into males.

After 24 days or so, the fry – now a male – turns into a fingerling ready for sale, explains Carbellado who used to work in a hatchery in Bacolod , Negros Occidental. Each fingerling is sold from 50 to 70 centavos each, depending on size.

Because of DOST’s assistance, Palaisdaan Natin now grows 15,000 kilograms of adult tilapia earning P1.5 million and 5 million tilapia fingerlings earning P2 million annually.