Infection down, yields up

THE Cocoa Coconut Institute has noticed a reduction in crop infection, especially cocoa pod borer and black pod disease, a member of the institute’s steering committee says.
Gioving Belong said they had seen increased yield by farmers who attended the institute’s workshops and activities in the cocoa producing areas of the country.
Belong attributed that to the institute’s integrated pest and disease management programme.
He was speaking during a visit to farmers of the Takom Cooperative Society at Garam in Morobe’s Markham district, where the steering committee members, senior agriculture scientists and field extension officers met with the farmers and interested locals  last Wednesday.
That visit followed an earlier field day hosted at Erima Primary School in Madang, where an institute team visited and interacted with farmers, before travelling to Lae where they stopped and met with more farmers between Usino-Bundi and Ramu valley.
The steering committee holds two meetings annually and has a field day as part of the meetings.
Its first meeting was held at the Melanesian hotel in Lae on Friday.
The farmers were told the institute had two national projects that were important in the development of cocoa.
The two projects are the national cocoa-coconut production improvement programme, which helps farmers to improve production using technologies against disease and reduce incidences. It is headed by Alfred Nongkas.
The second project headed by Dr Mathias Faure is the national seed garden programme where seed gardens were established in 14 provinces around the country and which is an expansion of the early establishments in Rabaul and Madang.
“The first project is to basically build capacity of farmers, while the national seed garden as the second project brings seeds and nursery gardens closer to farmers and working parallel to them,” Belong said.
More than 300 people gathered at the Takom Model Farm, which is the base of the Takom Cooperative Society, headed by principal farmer, Awa Mundugen.