Garaina to have cloned cocoa

PNG Cocoa Board hopes to increase Garaina Valley’s cocoa production with a cloned cocoa, its regional manager Anton Ningi says.
“A team of field service officers from the Kokopo office is currently in the valley to set up a budwood seed-garden for cloned cocoa.
“This garden is to provide the basis for cloning and its expansion. There are about 18 approved clones from research and all have been brought in for farmers to extend their farms,” he said, adding that there were now two types of cocoa plants in the valley – the hybrid and the cloned.
“The only difference between these two is the sustainability to cocoa pod borer and that the hybrid is directly from specially bred seeds while the clone is from the bud that’s attached to another plant.
“For now, we are harvesting from the hybrid. These hybrid plants will be used as rootstalk to which the buds from the garden will be attached to,” he added.
Ningi said about 129,000 hybrid seedlings had been distributed in valley since 2014.