West Africa is the world’s most important region for cocoa production. One of the major limitations to the productivity of the crop is the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD). In Ghana, where some 800’000 farm families depend on revenues from the cocoa crop for their livelihoods, CSSVD is significantly reducing cocoa production. The governmental eradication program is addressing the problem by cutting out infected trees. Up to date, more than 250 million cocoa trees have been cut, which led to an estimated monetary loss of more than 7 billion US dollars. Despite these efforts, CSSVD is still prevalent in the field today.
Since 70 years of research and development on the disease have only partly been able to address the problem, a shift in research approaches is needed; farmers and other relevant stakeholders need to be brought into planning and execution of future research and intervention activities. The proposed project targets the reduction of the spread and impact of CSSVD by contributing to the adaptation of the existing governmental CSSVD prevention and control program.
This is achieved by (i) performing a meta-analysis to quantitatively assess a vast body of data from both published and unpublished sources, (ii) complementing and validating the consolidated knowledge gained in the meta-analysis with an in-depth study on the effect of shade on CSSVD regulation, and (iii) disseminating the results by farmer field days and exchange workshops, as well as integrating them into the existing governmental CSSVD prevention and control program through transdisciplinary workshops involving all relevant stakeholders.
Project leader
