It will be all about bananas during the “Banana O’Clock” time in the municipality of Lambunao to make both the fruit and its value-added products popular to help revive the industry.

Banana is the One Town, One Product (OTOP) of the municipality of Lambunao as tagged by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), said Local Economic Development and Investments Promotion (LEDIP) officer Arlene Lavilla in an interview on Wednesday, March 22.

“We conceptualized an activity that could awaken our people here in Lambunao about banana. We will introduce anything out of banana,” she said.

The event, from March 24 to 25, is dubbed “Banana O’clock” since there will be a specific time dedicated to activities that will help awaken public interest.

This coming March 24 at 4 p.m. there will be the “Lambanana cooking contest” featuring appetizers, main courses and desserts using bananas as the major ingredient while the dedicated hour the next day is at 6 p.m.

“This is just a beginning activity for banana. We will have other activities for our farmers,” Lavilla added.

There will also be selling of banana produce during the whole duration of the Wow Lambunao Nights.

OTOP is DTI’s priority stimulus program for micro-, small-and medium-scale enterprises to drive inclusive local economic growth while the “Wow Lambunao Nights” is a marketing strategy.

The LEDIP officer said that the municipality has a lot of banana producers and their products are being exported locally to other local government units in Iloilo.

Lavilla said while the product has already reached other municipalities, it still needs to be popularized among locals.

Currently, Lambunao has 3,423 farmers engaged in planting bananas covering an area of around 810 hectares, according to the town’s Agriculture Office.

Municipal Agriculturist Pablito said that banana as an OTOP focused on the “lakatan” variety, which did not prosper unfortunately after it was hit by a disease called bunchy top (plant virus).

“In our survey, almost one percent of the 810 hectares are planted with lakatan because they are very vulnerable to bunchy top,” he noted.

During the “Wow Lambunao Nights”, they will showcase various varieties including “saba” and “latundan.”

Leal said the event will be a big help to the industry, especially if it will help find a market for the product.

Currently, the farm gate price of lakatan ranges from P25 to P30 per kilo, saba is at P10 to P13 a kilo, and latundan is P18 to P22 per kilo depending on the demand.Perla Lena/PNA