The Government of Japan through its Ambassador, His Excellency Toshinao Urabe approved the Upgrading of Pesticide Residue Laboratories project of the Bureau of Plant Industry. The good news was contained in the letter dated March 7, 2012 authorizing the use of the proceeds generated from the Japanese Grant Assistance for the Food Security Project for Underprivileged Farmers, also known as the 2KR Program, being managed by the National Agricultural and Fishery Council.
The two-year project amounts to P92.0M WHERE P85.5M will be charged under the 2KR Program while the remaining will be the proponent’s equity. It involves the procurement and installation of sophisticated analytical equipments in the National Pesticide Analytical Laboratories and the Davao Pesticide Analytical Laboratories. These are the laboratories accredited to conduct analyses of prime commodities like mango and okra to Japan. Consequently, the project aims to improve the analytical capability of the NPAL and DPAL. These equipments include one (1) unit of Liquid Chromatograph with tandem mass spectrometer (LC-MS-MS), one (1) unit of Gas Chromatograph with tandem Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS-MS), five (5) units of Gas Chromatograph with Mass Chromatograph (GC-MS) and one (1) Liquid Chromatograph with Ultraviolet with visual range.
The laboratories were able to cope up with the demands of analytics of analysis until the implementation of the positive list system in Japan. With the increasing number of samples and increasing number of detections of different pesticides in the importing country, the need for screening those commodities for pesticide residues becomes necessary to prevent detections and return of the said commodities to the country of origin. Thus, the project aims to enhance the global competitiveness of the country’s export commodities. This is expected to be achieved through the development and validation of analytical methods that can minimize the detention/detection of food safety concerns of exported commodities.
