Nigeria's southeastern cocoa belt to see good harvest

Adequate rain in Nigeria's southeastern cocoa belt is helping development of the crop this year and the region should begin harvest in September, cocoa industry officials and traders said Friday.

"We are receiving good and substantial rains. There are several flowers, many flowers have turned to pods and pod development is generally good," Johnson Uche, an official of the state-supported National Cocoa Development Committee (NCDC) in Umuahia, Abia state, said.

The rains have not caused any serious pest or disease outbreak on cocoa farms and several healthy looking pods were on the trees, Uche said, noting that the first harvest would begin in September in Abia, which produces about 30,000 tons of cocoa per year.

Titus Obang, a cocoa trader in Etung area of southeast Cross River state, said cocoa flowering was progressing well as the current rainfall "is not too much."

"If the rains continue as they are now, we can expect a very good main crop harvest in September. But if the rains become too heavy and excessive we will have problems such as the black pod disease," Obang said.

Cross River state, the top cocoa grower of the three cocoa- growing states in the southeast, produces around 50,000 tons of cocoa a year. It is the second largest cocoa producer in Nigeria after Ondo state in the southwest.

An official of the Cocoa Association of Nigeria said that rainfall has also been good and that the crop was developing well in the third cocoa grower in the southeast, Akwa Ibom state. The harvest was also expected to start in the state in September, he added.

Source: Xinhua