The Department of Agriculture Regional Office VIII, through the Regional Crop Protection Center (RCPC) and the National Corn Program, conducted an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Training on corn on April 23-24, 2026, at the Training Room of the Baybay City Hall, Baybay City, Leyte.

The two-day activity was attended by farmers, agriculture student interns, and Agricultural Extension Workers (AEWs) of the city, who learned about the growth stages of corn, the identification and management of major insect pests, the natural enemies of corn insect pests, the identification and management of major corn diseases, rodent management, and corn sampling procedures.

RCPC technical staff served as resource persons and facilitators, providing an overview of the activity. To evaluate the participants’ ability to identify key pests responsible for crop losses, pre-tests and post-tests were conducted.

On the second day, a field activity took place in Barangay Zone 1, where participants were divided into three (3) groups. Each group collected specimens, such as insect pests, diseased plant samples, and beneficial insects, from the corn field for analysis and identification. They also released earwigs as biological control agents that prey on small insect pests of corn. The groups then presented the collected specimens and reports using the Agro-Ecosystem Analysis (AESA) monitoring method.

After the two-day training, participants were expected to be familiar with the identification of corn pests and their natural enemies, able to recognize pests and their damage—including deficiency symptoms in corn—when encountered in the field, and capable of adapting sampling procedures for corn pest monitoring while following the proper data collection process.