The Department of Agriculture Regional Field Office 3 hosted the Harmonization of Onion Data between the High Value Crops Development Program (HVCDP) and Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) via blended set-up, face to face and Webex application, from April 26 to 28, 2022, held at the OGH Resort Hotel Clarkview 1934 Sampaguita Street, Angeles, Pampanga which was spearheaded by officials from the Office of the Undersecretary for High Value Crops and Rural Credit (HVCRC).
A total of 50 attendees participated in the said event including HVCDP regional coordinators and report officers, BPI officials, representatives from the Agribusiness and Marketing Assistance Service (AMAS) and Information and Communication Technology Service (ICTS), and other DA support staff.
As the host region, DA RFO 3 Regional Technical Director Eduardo Lapuz, Jr. opened the activity and welcomed the guests and participants.“We are here to harmonize the data we have. Data harmonization is important because we want information to be transparent and available for all. We want to have that information as close as possible to the source.”, Director Gerald Glenn Panganiban of the National High Value Crops Development Program said as he delivered the rationale of the activity.
The activity made them come up with agreement on the tasks for monitoring, harmonizing data and data sharing with internal and external users. They also discussed process improvements in gathering, harmonizing and storing onion data from different sources to ensure data accuracy; updated and consolidated the onion producing regions’ and LGUs’ production data on red and yellow onions and shallots and areas planted to onion as well as the latest expansion areas.
Assigned personnel presented different topics such as marketing services for onion (responses to current challenges); food safety and traceability; onion seed system; allium team monitoring (cold storage inventories and processes/best practices); creating a web-based relational onion database; simultaneous updating of data and simultaneous updating of data in google drive.
