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white potato. The Leyte State University Root Crops Research and Development Center also had, at about the same time, research works on tissue culture and protein enrichment of rootcrops. The University of the Philippines Natural Sciences Research Institute made a project on protein enrichment of Cavendish banana waste. Biotechnology was identified in the late 1980s by the Department of Science and Technology as one of the cutting edge of science for development. Between 1990 and 1995, a biotechnology R&D program for agriculture was prepared as a component of the sectoral plan prepared by the Philippine Council for Advanced Sciences and Technology Research and Development (PCASTRD) of the DOST. The Council defined the scope of research projects for funding and selected priority projects. For 19952000, the Council's priority list included the development of three groups of products, seven groups of processes and one selected or so-called vanguard project, and the establishment of database in the agriculture, forestry and environment sectors. The vanguard project was selected based on its social or economic impact: if service-oriented, it must be a response to a need, cover a wide target population, cater to a global market, and incur savings for the government. If profit-oriented, the product must be better than the one existing in the market and can be patented, have a ready market (or its market can be developed) and allow a cost-effective development (considering developmental time vis-á-vis patentable time). It must be timely. The project must be doable; that is, the local infrastructure is adequate, local resources (e.g., expertise) is sufficient and the project has technical and scientific merit. It must be environment friendly, too. While most projects focused on research using microbial systems, the 1995 vanguard project was on genome mapping of mango and coconut with molecular markers. There is therefore no integrated agricultural R&D program and when taken on the overall, the research directions were mainly dependent on senior scientists' ability to access funding from various agencies. Between 1977 and 1996, about 75 percent of agricultural biotechnology research projects were on the production of biocontrol agents, soil amendments, food and beverages and development of tissue culture methods (Table 3). About 15 percent were on other applications of microbial systems (feed additives, enzymes/cells for agriprocessing, farm waste management, vaccines) and about 10 percent were in the applications of modern techniques such as monoclonal antibodies, molecular markers and rDNA. Biocontrol agents are the natural enemies of pests and a component of the integrated pest management (IPM) strategy. Those agents being