This is reposted from the Can Guyabano Cure Cancer? - WELL-BEING By Mylene Mendoza-Dayrit (mylene@goldsgym.com.ph or mylenedayrit@gmail.com)

The Philippine Star,  August 24, 2010

I remember receiving an e-mail that soursop or guyabano is tens of thousands more potent than chemotherapy. Having just lost a friend this year due to cancer, I looked at the title and trashed the copy dismissing it as another one of those incredulous claims.

Then I met a biochemist from a reputable university who claims three personal encounters with the efficacy of the plant. She excitedly recounted to me — in between rounds of freshly roasted Bataan coffee from her plantation — that the latest case involved the local barangay captain who was diagnosed with cancer. My husband knows him. His family was advised to prepare for the worse as he was thought to have only six months to live. Waiting for the prospect of a costly surgery, the patient got depressed and was resigned that he will not survive this. Gina boosted his morale and gave the friendly advice of taking tea from the soursop bark and leaves.

Apparently, the barangay captain did just that. He drank the soursop tea as his water for three months. He felt better and better and when he had another scan not a single tumor was seen. He was declared cancer-free!

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The government might eventually end up giving out pepper pellets, not for condiments but as a means of decimating dengue-bearing mosquitoes.

This, if scientists at the Philippine National Health Research Institute (PNHRI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) would find it practical and effective.

PNHRI Executive Director Jaime Montoya told a press conference that they are looking at the possible use of pepper pellets to reduce the population of dengue vectors.

“May mga technology na tayo laban sa lamok. Napag-alaman ko lang na [We already have technology against mosquitoes. I just learned that] based on the researches made by the PCHRD (Philippine Council for Health Research and Development), ‘yung pepper pellets have (a killing effect) against a larva. Pag nilagay mo sa tubig ‘yan at dumapo d’yan, nangitlog dyan ang lamok, patay ang lamok. [If you put that in water and a mosquito hatches egg on it, it will die],” he said.

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NOT all the king’s men can stop the march of armyworms. What the king’s men failed to do, however, a farmer succeeded in beating back the invading hordes that have been destroying Negros Occidental’s food crops.

A young Kabankalanon farmer-scientist harnessed nuclear polyhedrosis virus (NPV) as a biological weapon against armyworms, the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist recently announced. Roland Quimpo experimented with an NPV solution against the armyworms feasting on his peanut plants.

Within three days, the horde was kaput. Quimpo tried the NPV solution against the armyworms in his Tamlang farm. His purok was one of the worst hit with the attack. Said he, “I observed that the worms vomited, no longer ate the leaves of my plants, became weak, their rears turned up, and died.  I found black spots on their abdomen.”

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To ensure better yield and higher rate of survival for seedlings prepared in its very own nursery, Sagittarius Mines, Inc. (SMI) is employing the “elevated seedling hardening” technology on the seedlings they distribute to communities in South Cotabato.

Elevated hardening is a leading-edge practice in seedling care developed through a joint study by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), University of Queensland, and College of Forestry and Natural Resources at the Visayas State University.

For the people of South Cotabato, seedling survival of trees and other plants has always been a concern. Poorly cultivated seedlings produce low quality trees that tend to wither and die when exposed to adverse conditions despite proper planting and maintenance of the plantation area. High quality seedlings, on the other hand, facilitate high survival rates of trees and decreased maintenance costs of tree plantations.

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Despite the El Niño, his lowland rice crops reached harvesting stage with more filled grains and more seeds per panicle.

Bernardo Calilung, Magsasaka Siyentista of Farmers’ Information and Technology Services (FITS) Center in Tarlac City, proved that the combined application of vermicompost and vermitea can improve soil condition and agronomic performance of selected rice varieties.

Calilung’s farm in Barangay Amucao, Tarlac City was used as a Science and Technology-based farm (STBF) demonstration plot. The Tarlac College of Agriculture (TCA), Tarlac City FITS Center, Central Luzon Agriculture and Resources Research and Development Consortium (CLARRDEC), and the Philippine Coun-cil for Agriculture, Forestry and Natu-ral Resources Re-search and Development (PCARRD) assisted Calilung during the STBF implementation.

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We had our vermicomposting bin setup with the help of two friends (Xavier and Malou Peña) over the weekend. They brought a kilo of African Night Crawlers (ANC) worms and showed us how to properly prepare the bed.

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Barnyard in Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Goats gives a detailed and comprehensive guide to raising goats. Raising goats has many benefits including meat and milk. Their manure can also be used in composting.

Goats serve many purposes worldwide. They produce delicious milk, healthfullow-fat meat, and fiber for spinning. They are excellent at brush control, and they may be used to carry camping supplies on hiking trips or hitched up to help withlight chores around the yard. They are inexpensive to maintain, require simplehousing, do not take up a lot of space, and are easy to handle and transport.

Click on the Cover Page or the Title to download.

Compost: The Natural Way to Make Food for Your Garden by Ken Thompson is another reference that will be very useful for gardeners and farmers alike. A straightforward and easy reading that will serve as a composting blueprint.

Our backyard garden may be small but nothing compares to the simple joys of harvesting something from it. We gathered the first fruits of our pipinitos (mini cucumbers) after just barely two months after we first sowed the seeds.

For breakfast, we  sliced the pipinitos into thin pieces as salad and it was great with rice, sardines and scrambled eggs. We also prepared a blended pipinito smoothie out of our harvest. All we did was mix some calamansi juice, add honey to sweeten and some crushed ice. The result was a refreshing and delicious drink.

Growing pipinitos is easy. Sow the seeds directly and put a trellis near it (a tree branch will do), water regularly and wait for nature to run its course. We did not put any fertilizers nor applied pesticides but we got good results. Imagine doing this in your own yards.

I came across products developed by scientists of Biotech UP Los Banos in Laguna which I think are very useful in farming and other applications.

Above: Taken from BioLife (Quarterly Magazine of Biotechnology) Vol1 No2 April-June 2005 Issue

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