Philippine officials said Saturday they had set a new world record for the most trees planted in an hour, with 3.2 million seedlings sown as part of a national forestation programme.
Official certification from Guinness World Records will still take weeks but government officers expressed confidence they had broken the old record of 1.9 million trees planted in India on August 15, 2011.
The trees were planted in six different areas on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao by an army of 160,000 people including government employees, students and volunteers, said the regional environment director Marc Fragada.
"Our official count is about 3.2 million trees in one hour. But we are still getting reports. We still have to prepare the packaging of documentary evidence (for Guinness)," he told AFP.
