DA pushes adlay and apali as nutritious, climate-resilient alternatives to stretch rice supply

As the Department of Agriculture (DA) intensifies its ABKD campaign encouraging Filipinos to “Be RICEponsible” and make rice available for those who need it most, the agency is putting the spotlight on traditional rice extenders — including adlay and its Bohol counterpart, apali.

DA: consume nutritious brown, pigmented rice

The campaign, to popularize brown rice, or essentially that source of the pearly white rice most people are consuming, and the pigmented varieties like the black and the red rice, which, with initial milling, only scrapes off the rice hull, and retains the bran, which lends its brown coloration, and has a higher fiber, protein and vitamins, over their re-processed siblings.