Coconut Palm- In the News
Caye Chapel OTC program a success
Over the last year and half, Caye Chapel lost close to 1/3 of its coco palms
to lethal yellowing. This equated to about 50-60 mature palms dying every
month. The OTC program was started 7 months ago and since then not one
single palm has become symptomatic of Lethal Yellowing.
Status on the availability of Maypan hybrids for Belize- Oct. 5, 1997
Well there isn't usually any good news that accompanies Lethal yellowing and
in this case I, unfortunately, dont have a very good report on our future
supply of maypans for our replanting program.
There are only two places in the world that produce certified maypans: one
is in Costa Rica - (Sacrac) and the other is in Jamaica - (Jamaican coconut
board). the Jamaican program is about 4 times larger than Costa Rica.
Additionally Belize has a Maypan hybrid program but has gone thru its ups
and downs over the last 4 yrs due to govt budget cuts. the Belizean seednuts
are not board certified but as far as I am concerned they are equal in
quality to the others.
Due to the spread of ly in the Caribbean basin and Central America, the
demand for Maypans are not able to keep up with the supply and orders are
backlogged for over a year. This is good for the producers but not for us!
Our in country program at central farm, which is operated by AgroPro Ltd,
will only be able to supply an estimated 500 seedlings per month commencing
in the middle of 1998. currently they have backorders amounting to 3-4000
seedlings with more requests coming in weekly.
AgroPro was able to secure a shipment of 4000 Jamaican seednuts for 1st qtr
1998 delivery but 3000 of these are for one commercial customer and the
other 1000 will be applied towards the above 3-4000 orders. They were very
lucky to get the Jamaica order due to a last minute cancellation from
another Carribbean island.
It is rather expensive to import the seednuts from Jamaica and practically
cost prohibitive to bring them in from Costa Rica due to the lack of direct
shipping lines.
We brought in one order of 2500 seedlings from Costa Rica last june by
truck. The seedlings were delivered at the original promised price and the
whole exercise became a financial loss for Agropro.
Hopefully something will come up in the near future where we will be able to
get a more constant supply of seednuts from Jamaica and at the same time, be
supplemented by our local supply from Agropro. the cost of the seedlings
delivered to the consumer will be rather high but we really dont have any
other option as it does not appear that the Belize govt is willing or able
to help fund a replanting program.
Chris Berlin
This summary was written by Chris Berlin. For OTC treatments or for help with
anything to do with coconut palms contact:
Chris Berlin
Fax: 011-501-226 3379
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