World's top cocoa producer aims for a climate-tough bean

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.

"You can lose everything," he sighed. The west African country is the world's top cocoa producer, responsible for nearly 40 percent of global output. 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. 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.

Specifically, the researchers are working on bean varieties that are less sensitive to the availability of water."We take the flowers from the male parents, which we then use to pollinate the flowers of the female parents... it's their offspring that we take", then test in the greenhouse and expose to various levels of water stress, geneticist Caudou Trebissou told the media.

So far, the researchers have come up with 11 "satisfactory" varieties, which they plan to eventually release on the market.

Geneticist Caudou Trebissou measures cocoa pods on trees in a cocoa seed field belonging to the National Center for Agronomic Research (CNRA) near Divo, Ivory Coast. AFP.

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. "From 2003 to 2022, we saw that rainfall has declined.

We're only at 1,100 and something" millimetres 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. When the plants manage to survive, "we see a drop in flowering or a shift in the flowering period" and "few fruits", she added. The lack of rain also leads to "declines in soil fertility; some mineral elements will no longer be accessible to the plant", she said.

Farmers see this up close on their land. "When it doesn't rain, the branches are dry, the leaves curl up" and "the pods are small", said Anselme Kouakou, who grows cocoa a few kilometres from Amani in the centre of the country.

A general view of Sun-dried cofffe beans near Divo, Ivory Coast. AFP.

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. He used to have just cocoa trees on his land. Now he intersperses them with cashew, iroko timber and banana -- trees whose leaves shade the precious cocoa pods and whose trunks help irrigate them thanks to their high-water content.

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. "The future of our orchards lies in research," Yves Brahima Kone, who heads the cocoa industry's regulatory body, said at the start of September.

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. If nothing is done, "by 2050, Ivory Coast's export agriculture will suffer a decline in cocoa production of 20 percent", the government has warned. The country is not the only one likely to suffer -- Europe, the world's largest consumer of chocolate products, takes in 70 percent of Ivorian cocoa exports.

Agence France-Presse