|
By J. Restituto, Internews & Features
BANGA, Aklan: Found only in the wild, in the forests of the Sierra
Madre mountains in Aurora province and in Batanes, sabutan is highly
priced in the world of high fashion.
To ensure the supply of rare sabutan fiber, the
Aklan State University (ASU) here is the first to attempt its
culture in the laboratory. And it has succeeded.
The two-meter-long sabutan leaves are soft and
shiny, turning green just before harvest. They are stripped into
fibers that are very fine and smooth but strong in texture.
Bright, eye-catching colorfast dyes give the
more sophisticated finish to stylish fashion products.
Sabutan fibers are woven into hats, baskets,
handbags, fans, wallets, wall decors, placemats, coasters, fancy
slippers and home and Christmas decors. Traditionally, they are also
made into mats, toys, decorative flowers and curtains.
The hand-woven bags especially have designer
trims such as leather, snakeskin, suede and wood. They are sold in
Hollywood’s Beverly Hills boutiques and hailed by fashion
magazines from Milan to Manila.
Processing is hard work and manual: cutting the
leaves, trimming thorny edges, stripping, sorting, drying and
flattening. In the 1950s, practically every home in Aurora had a
sabutan weaver. Today only 10,000 weavers are left, most of them
peasant women.
Provincial trade officials put the export of
sabutan accessories at US$160 million annually—sold mostly in the
United States, Japan, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong,
Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and Uruguay. One local company produces nearly
44,000 hats and bags a year valued in the millions of pesos and sold
in New Jersey (New York), Japan and London.
A species of pandan, sabutan grows from 2 to 4
meters tall but rarely produces flowers. It has not been found to
bear fruits.
Being rare makes it very expensive. So much so
that it is overharvested and what’s left of the sabutan stands
could now easily be depleted into oblivion.
“It is endangered because its fiber is very
expensive,” says Mike Ibisate, a researcher at the ASU College of
Agriculture, Forestry and Ecological Sciences. “Because natural
seed production is threatened, its range is shrinking.”
Once abundant in the wild, even between rows of
coconut trees, the fiber was so highly in demand that overharvesting
has left less than 50 hectares of sabutan stands in mountain slopes,
mostly in San Luis and Baler towns. Coffee and citrus plantations
also took over sabutan lands.
It was threatened with extinction unless cloning
stepped in, says Ibisate who made the successful laboratory culture
of sabutan.
Sabutan comes from so-called suckers that grow
in semi-wild conditions. Very rarely—because it is unsuccessful
most of the time—the traditional way of propagating is by
replanting the suckers.
“We can use tissue culture and produce plenty
of seedlings but it will take time to produce cloned suckers in a
natural stand,” Ibisate says.
He struck green gold at the ASU laboratory. Only
after a month of culture in the dark, sabutan leaves that were cut
and put in a growing medium expanded and produced callus.
“We now know that inducing the callus to grow
in the dark is possible,” Ibisate concludes. The callus formation
is just the first stage of a long process.
The ongoing Stage Two is to produce plantlets
from the callus. If this is successful, the plantlets will be
nurtured for 1.5 years in trial nurseries “prior to massive
propagation followed by widespread distribution in Aurora,” says
Ibisate.
|
