Helen
How are you carrying out an in-depth study on Coconuts? Is ACIAR or
the ANU or an international agency funding you to travel around the
world? Are you posting questionnaires by email and snail mail to
countries you cannot travel to? Or is "in-depth" an abbreviation for
"internet-depth"? Although it is my strongly held belief that coconut
R&D must make greater use of the world-wide-web, first hand experience
is always necessary for a good understanding of survey data.
You say that most of what you have been told and have read looks
rather gloomy for the coconut industry. Well you are not the first to
think so. Forty years ago, in 1969, another in-depth study on the
coconut industry, commissioned by the United Nations, thought that
“The danger of substitution of products or of the source of supply has
very much darkened the future of the coconut economy of Asia”. Since
then the oil palm has displaced coconut as a source of vegetable oil
and genetically modified annual crops can now produce high lauric oils
outside the tropics. Yet the coconut palm still sustains the lives of
millions of small farmers as well as those engaged in industries
developed around the production, processing and marketing of coconut
products.
Also in 1969, the Asian and Pacific Coconut Community (APCC) was
established to promote, coordinate and harmonize all activities of the
coconut industry. Other agencies have come and gone since then but the
APCC, like the coconut palm, still keeps going.
Helen, you also say you would like the most up-to-date information on
Lethal Yellowing, and to know if a solution to this epidemic has been
found. The first is easy because there was an international LY
workshop in Accra, Ghana this year and there is an internet group, the
Centre for Information on Coconut Lethal Yellowing (CICLY) that is
intended to act as a clearing house for information about lethal
yellowing and similar diseases of coconuts and other palms. Anyone
can visit the CICLY web site.
The second part of the answer is less easy, and may be less
acceptable . . . either stop growing coconuts in an LY area, or move
to an LY-free area . . . or learn to live with the disease.
As one example, the first serious LY epidemic, in Baracoa, Cuba from
1905 to 1910 decimated production to such an extent that
entrepreneurs from the USA chose to plant and process coconuts in the
Philippines rather than import copra from closer sources in Latin-
America and the Caribbean. Coming just as the demand for coconut oil
was stimulated by the 1914-18 war (CNO is a raw material for candles,
soap, margarine and high explosives), this made the Philippines the
dominant coconut producing country, an indirect and hitherto
unrecognized effect of LY.
Another example is the pattern of an uncontrollable epidemic,
introduction of exotic germplasm and subsequent exposure of survivors
to further epidemic cycles. Now a recent experience in Jamaica and
elsewhere, it had already occurred in Cuba sixty-five years ago! At
that time it was postulated that an insect vector was involved and
observed that resistance breeding seemed the only recourse.
But just planting resistant varieties is not enough. With the benefit
of hindsight the early 1980s policy decisions taken to resuscitate the
ailing banana industry in Jamaica changed the traditional mixed
cropping system which did not give unblemished fruit quality demanded
of that important export crop and bananas were no longer planted
between coconut palms. A barrier of an immune intercrop, such as
bananas, is a possible contributing factor protecting both susceptible
and resistant coconut varieties from LY.
The presence of Royal palms (Roystonia spp) demonstrates this, both
amongst the ordinary tall coconuts in the Dominican Republic (where LY
has remained stationary for decades) and also in Cuba, where the
'Dorado Cubano' (a selection from progenies of the Cuban 'Criollo' and
the introduced 'Indio' coconuts) is reported to perform well in mixed
plantings where LY is present.
Nevertheless, the first outbreak of LY is very damaging to the local
community who depend on coconuts for sustenance and income. So, in
addition to taking precautions – interplanting resistant coconut
varieties with suitable intercrops – there also needs to be an
organized marketing response – for the immediate recovery of edible
palm heart following the undelayed removal of any coconut palm with
suspicious symptoms, for , for harvesting immature (drinking) nuts
instead of mature (copra) nuts, for extracting timber from the palm
trunk, etc.
Gloom, if there is any, should be reserved for those who know that LY
may arrive at any time but have not prepared, in advance, to meet it
when it does come.
Bes wishes
Hugh
> 22/12/2008 19:49 from
helen...@adam.com.au
On 23 Dec, 17:53, Hugh <
hugh.harr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 22/12/2008 19:49 from
helen...@adam.com.au