As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We of­fer this me­dia se­ries, ‘UWI Sci­en­tists Speak’ where our sci­en­tists, three of whom were re­cent­ly award­ed the high­est award of the na­tion–the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ORTT)–will present some of their work.

This week, we hear from dis­tin­guished sci­en­tist Prof Path­manathan Uma­ha­ran, ORTT, Di­rec­tor of the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre, on work be­ing done as part of the PhD project of Mr Mar­vin Lewis in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr Bheshem Ram­lal and Dr Michael Suther­land. He dis­cuss­es us­ing pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture to com­bat the ad­verse ef­fects of cli­mate change.

–Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, Prin­ci­pal, UWI, St Au­gus­tine

Prof Path­manathan Uma­ha­ran

The past two years have been es­pe­cial­ly harsh for co­coa farm­ers due to ad­verse cli­mate events af­fect­ing co­coa pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Es­ti­mates sug­gest that co­coa pro­duc­tion in T&T may have de­clined by more than 50 per cent be­cause of poor pod set­ting and in­creased loss­es due to pests and dis­eases. Bet­ter pre­dic­tive tech­nolo­gies and adap­tive in­ter­ven­tions are re­quired to pre­vent a re­peat of such oc­cur­rences. Co­coa farms face nu­mer­ous chal­lenges, in ad­di­tion to the ad­verse ef­fects of cli­mate change–such as in­creased loss­es as­so­ci­at­ed with dis­eases, par­rot and ro­dent dam­age, poor soil fer­til­i­ty and soil con­t­a­m­i­nants, poor ac­cess roads and the lack of avail­able labour­ers. The use of tra­di­tion­al one-size-fits-all in­ter­ven­tions has not, and will not, solve the mul­ti­tude of lo­calised chal­lenges that farm­ers face in an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly di­verse small is­land de­vel­op­ing state such as T&T.

Pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture us­es da­ta from mul­ti­ple sources to aug­ment crop pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty of large farms through bet­ter spa­tial and tem­po­ral man­age­ment of in­put use and risk mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures. In a coun­try with rel­a­tive­ly small farms and where co­coa is grown in dif­fer­ent ter­rains spread across the coun­try, one needs to adapt this con­cept to make it ap­plic­a­ble to lo­cal con­di­tions. Ad­vanced map­ping sys­tems are need­ed to cap­ture, process, in­te­grate and share geospa­tial da­ta with farm­ers to sup­port proac­tive de­ci­sion-mak­ing that is rel­e­vant to their spe­cif­ic needs.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre (CRC) is build­ing pre­ci­sion tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms to help co­coa farms im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and ef­fi­cien­cy and bet­ter man­age lo­cal risks. Phase one of this project, which has been com­plet­ed, is now ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing nu­anced sup­port to co­coa farms across the coun­try. Un­der this phase, the en­tire coun­try was di­vid­ed in­to six agroe­co­log­i­cal zones us­ing cli­mate and soil vari­ables. These zones were then sub­di­vid­ed in­to 43 co­coa-grow­ing com­mu­ni­ties (CGCs). Each CGC was as­sessed for soil chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal prop­er­ties, co­coa flavour pro­files, ter­rain, and risk propen­si­ties for dis­eases, pests, soil cad­mi­um, flood­ing, fires and con­straints such as labour avail­abil­i­ty, ac­cess roads, and prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. These were done through a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sur­vey of co­coa farms from with­in each com­mu­ni­ty. Over­lap­ping these vari­ables geospa­tial­ly, us­ing ge­o­graph­i­cal in­for­ma­tion sys­tems tech­nol­o­gy, has en­abled us to iden­ti­fy the strengths, risks, and con­straints on a com­mu­ni­ty-by-com­mu­ni­ty ba­sis. Match­ing these to good agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices has al­lowed us to iden­ti­fy lo­ca­tion-spe­cif­ic con­straints, risks and gaps. By lever­ag­ing this in­for­ma­tion, we have de­vel­oped a nu­anced ap­proach to im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and man­ag­ing risks.

This plat­form can bet­ter serve co­coa-grow­ing com­mu­ni­ties by pro­vid­ing an­swers to spe­cif­ic ques­tions. For ex­am­ple, which va­ri­eties should be rec­om­mend­ed for each CGC? Should it be clones or grafts? What com­bi­na­tion and amounts of fer­tilis­ers should be used? What lev­el of shade and or com­pan­ion crops are re­quired? Which tech­nolo­gies could be used to man­age the risk of cad­mi­um, dis­eases, drought, flood­ing, or fires?

Pre­ci­sion maps may al­so sup­port min­is­te­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tions to bet­ter tai­lor their ser­vices, in­clud­ing ex­ten­sion ser­vices and in­cen­tives, as well as to im­prove the process of pri­ori­tis­ing ac­cess roads, ir­ri­ga­tion needs, and flood con­trol mea­sures. This in­for­ma­tion can al­so as­sist fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in bet­ter align­ing their loan pack­ages. These in­ter­ven­tions will help farm­ers im­prove in­put use ef­fi­cien­cy, risk man­age­ment, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and prof­itabil­i­ty.

In Phase II of this project, me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal da­ta, satel­lite LI­DAR da­ta and a cit­i­zen sci­en­tist ap­pli­ca­tion will be used to im­prove pre­dic­tive mod­el­ling and re­sponse time to risk events. These will al­low farm­ers to bet­ter pre­pare to meet chal­lenges posed by the EN­SO cli­mate cy­cles and cli­mate change. The de­vel­op­ment of such tech­nolo­gies re­quires a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach. The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies is build­ing such teams to de­vel­op tech­nolo­gies to sup­port agri­cul­ture. In ad­di­tion, lo­calised mul­ti­stake­hold­er plat­forms in­volv­ing the Gov­ern­ment/min­istries, pri­vate sec­tor and the uni­ver­si­ty are re­quired to bet­ter im­ple­ment, as­sess and mod­i­fy them to ob­tain the de­sired im­pacts. In de­vel­op­men­tal lan­guage, this is called a triple he­lix ap­proach.

Such a nu­anced, in­clu­sive, and proac­tive ap­proach with clear­ly de­fined goals is es­sen­tial to achieve the de­sired de­vel­op­men­tal out­comes at a time when the world faces cli­mate change chal­lenges. Giv­en the re­gion­al reach of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, these tech­nolo­gies can be ex­tend­ed to the Caribbean in the re­gion’s quest to be­come food se­cure.