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Divo: Kofi Alexis Amani has watched the trees on his cocoa plantation wilt and sometimes wither as rains became unpredictable and less abundant in Ivory Coast over the past several decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can lose everything,\u201d he sighed.<\/p>\n
The west African country is the world\u2019s top cocoa producer, responsible for nearly 40 percent of global output.<\/p>\n
Its economy also depends on the crop, which accounts for 15 percent of GDP, supporting roughly five million people in a country of more than 33 million.<\/p>\n
So, scientists at the National Center for Agronomic Research (CNRA) have been working to develop a bean tough enough to survive the unpredictable weather events that man-made climate change has unleashed around the globe.<\/p>\n
Specifically, the researchers are working on bean varieties that are less sensitive to the availability of water.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take the flowers from the male parents, which we then use to pollinate the flowers of the female parents… it\u2019s their offspring that we take,\u201d then test in the greenhouse and expose to various levels of water stress, geneticist Caudou Trebissou told AFP.<\/p>\n
So far, the researchers have come up with 11 \u201csatisfactory\u201d varieties, which they plan to eventually release on the market.<\/p>\n
Drier, hotter <\/p>\n
While rainfall has fluctuated in the country since the 1950s, it has steadily dropped since the 1980s, with the trend continuing over the past few decades, according to a report by the ministry of ecology.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom 2003 to 2022, we saw that rainfall has declined. We\u2019re only at 1,100?and?something\u201d millimeters of water on average per year in the region, instead of the 1,200 to 2,000 mm that cocoa trees need, Maryse Assi, a CNRA agronomist, said.<\/p>\n
When the plants manage to survive, \u201cwe see a drop in flowering or a shift in the flowering period\u201d and \u201cfew fruits,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The lack of rain also leads to \u201cdeclines in soil fertility; some mineral elements will no longer be accessible to the plant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Farmers see this up close on their land.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it doesn\u2019t rain, the branches are dry, the leaves curl up\u201d and \u201cthe pods are small,\u201d said Anselme Kouakou, who grows cocoa a few kilometers from Amani in the center of the country.<\/p>\n
Future lies \u2018in research\u2019 <\/p>\n
While waiting for science to come up with a super-cocoa bean, Amani and others like him have tried to stem effects of climate change by altering how they plant their cocoa trees.<\/p>\n
He used to have just cocoa trees on his land.<\/p>\n
Now he intersperses them with cashew, iroko timber and banana \u2014 trees whose leaves shade the precious cocoa pods and whose trunks help irrigate them thanks to their high-water content.<\/p>\n
The research cannot come fast enough in Ivory Coast, predicted to be hit by extreme weather events like droughts or torrential rains in the coming decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe future of our orchards lies in research,\u201d Yves Brahima Kone, who heads the cocoa industry\u2019s regulatory body, said at the start of September.<\/p>\n
Temperatures, which have already risen by 1C between 1991 and 2020 according to a government report, could continue to climb by 1.7C to 3.7C by 2080, according to studies.<\/p>\n
If nothing is done, \u201cby 2050, Ivory Coast\u2019s export agriculture will suffer a decline in cocoa production of 20 percent,\u201d the government has warned.<\/p>\n
The country is not the only one likely to suffer \u2014 Europe, the world\u2019s largest consumer of chocolate products, takes in 70 percent of Ivorian cocoa exports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n