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Thank you so much for your interest in donating to our advocacy! Your donation will be used for food heritage research, field work expenses, website hosting and maintenance, and the like so that I can continue sharing our different local food cultures and ingredients.
Donate to the Cause
Thank you so much for your interest in donating to our advocacy! Your donation will be used for food heritage research, field work expenses, website hosting and maintenance, and the like so that I can continue sharing our different local food cultures and ingredients.
Support our local garlic cultivars! Why? Because they are superior in quality!
by Sherwin | Sept 10, 2022
The Philippines produces several garlic cultivars that are smaller in size but are more pungent and flavorful. Production centers of native garlic are found in Ilocos Region (the biggest producer), Batanes, Batangas, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Quezon, and Mindoro.
In the research article "Small in size, big on taste: Metabolomics analysis of flavor compounds from Philippine garlic (Molino, Rellin, Nellas, Junio, 2021)", it was revealed that the native Philippine garlic has broad range of compounds. Some of these compounds, particularly amino acids, and sugars, were detected at higher
intensities. Our garlic cultivars have superior aroma and taste in comparison with the obtained imported garlic varieties.
However, despite the superior quality, locally produced garlic performs poorly compared to
imported white garlic varieties. 90% of garlic in the market are imported (from China [top supplier of imported garlic], India, Taiwan and neighboring SEA countries).
*Please take note that the term "native" is loosely used in this post. The word "native" means indigenous of origin or growth. As we all know, garlic is an introduced species. We used the word for our local cultivars that have been planted in the Philippine soil for hundreds of years.
