By JP Labouisse, T Sileye and R. Bourdeix
The current governmental plan for boosting coconut planting
The Vanuatu Government has recently adopted a national coconut sector strategy for the period 2016-2025. This strategy is the country’s roadmap for revitalising the coconut sector and addressing the critical factors that affect its development. The focus is on diversifying the sector and aligning it with the current innovations in production in order to take advantage of the demands in the global markets. The specific objectives of the strategy are listed below:
1. Establish appropriate administrative and regulatory frameworks to manage the coconut sector.
2. Increase farmer access to improved planting materials.
3. Enhance coconut farming through appropriate information and support.
4. Increase production and quality through good agricultural practices.
5. Introduce incentives for private sector engagement in agro-processing and value adding at all levels of the value chain.
6. Enhance trade and marketing of coconut products in the domestic and export market.
One of the target is to plant a million coconuts between 2016 and 2026. This involves disseminating 120,000 seednuts every year. The activity started in 2016 with VARTC as the seed nuts main provider and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) as the coordinator. The number of seed nuts is limited to 500 per farmer and per year. Practically, the DARD field assistants, posted in the islands, group the farmers’ requests for planting material. The officer in charge, based at DARD antenna of Santo, centralizes all the requests and places an order to VARTC. Seednuts are packed in bags of 40. The bags are delivered by road in Santo and by ship to the islands, provided that there is a DARD field assistant to receive them and organize the distribution.
That cost of that operation (planting material and transportation to the islands) is entirely supported by a governmental fund.
That operation has been widely covered by national media:
Vanuatu Daily News : 26 August 2016. One million coconut trees by 2025
Vanuatu Daily Post 19 April 2017. DARD distributes 26,646 seed nuts
Vanuatu Daily Post, 28 December 2017 Coconut sector a major contributor to GDP
How to amplify the impact of the governmental scheme?
In a scattered structure like the Vanuatu archipelago, a centralized production of planting material is a major hindrance to wide scale dissemination. To amplify the impact of the current governmental scheme, it is recommended to produce Improved VTT in decentralized seed gardens on islands with a similar ecology to that at Saraoutou, using seed nuts harvested from VARTC seed gardens. This can be done by small holders or large estates provided a good field maintenance and isolation from other (non improved) coconut plantations. Thus, this will consist in a five-step strategy:
The present coconut seed supply system in Vanuatu seems very efficient, but it remains based to the wide scale diffusion of a unique variety. In order to fit with the international recommendations from the COGENT network, it will be great to diversify the planting material proposed to farmers. CIDP project could help in this process.
In November 2013, an interesting discussion was conducted between Tiatia Sileye, Jean Pierre Labouisse and Roland Bourdeix about seednuts production in Vanuatu.
Roland, November 10th 2013
Dear Colleagues,
Kind regards
Dear Roland,
That is the best scenario we could imagine for coconuts. But we cannot ignore the challenges:
The current governmental plan for boosting coconut planting
The Vanuatu Government has recently adopted a national coconut sector strategy for the period 2016-2025. This strategy is the country’s roadmap for revitalising the coconut sector and addressing the critical factors that affect its development. The focus is on diversifying the sector and aligning it with the current innovations in production in order to take advantage of the demands in the global markets. The specific objectives of the strategy are listed below:
1. Establish appropriate administrative and regulatory frameworks to manage the coconut sector.
2. Increase farmer access to improved planting materials.
3. Enhance coconut farming through appropriate information and support.
4. Increase production and quality through good agricultural practices.
5. Introduce incentives for private sector engagement in agro-processing and value adding at all levels of the value chain.
6. Enhance trade and marketing of coconut products in the domestic and export market.
One of the target is to plant a million coconuts between 2016 and 2026. This involves disseminating 120,000 seednuts every year. The activity started in 2016 with VARTC as the seed nuts main provider and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) as the coordinator. The number of seed nuts is limited to 500 per farmer and per year. Practically, the DARD field assistants, posted in the islands, group the farmers’ requests for planting material. The officer in charge, based at DARD antenna of Santo, centralizes all the requests and places an order to VARTC. Seednuts are packed in bags of 40. The bags are delivered by road in Santo and by ship to the islands, provided that there is a DARD field assistant to receive them and organize the distribution.
That cost of that operation (planting material and transportation to the islands) is entirely supported by a governmental fund.
That operation has been widely covered by national media:
Vanuatu Daily News : 26 August 2016. One million coconut trees by 2025
Vanuatu Daily Post 19 April 2017. DARD distributes 26,646 seed nuts
Vanuatu Daily Post, 28 December 2017 Coconut sector a major contributor to GDP
How to amplify the impact of the governmental scheme?
In a scattered structure like the Vanuatu archipelago, a centralized production of planting material is a major hindrance to wide scale dissemination. To amplify the impact of the current governmental scheme, it is recommended to produce Improved VTT in decentralized seed gardens on islands with a similar ecology to that at Saraoutou, using seed nuts harvested from VARTC seed gardens. This can be done by small holders or large estates provided a good field maintenance and isolation from other (non improved) coconut plantations. Thus, this will consist in a five-step strategy:
- Disseminate the improved Vanuatu Tall (iVTT) produced at VARTC as widely as possible;
- Among the farmers who planted iVTT, identify well-managed and isolated plantations that could serve as decentralized seedgardens
- Train some of these farmers for mother palm selection and good nursery practices, so that they further engage in seed production
- Have these new seedgardens labeled by the DARD and VARTC
- Ensure regular monitoring by DARD and VARTC of these new seed gardens so their quality will remains guaranteed.
The present coconut seed supply system in Vanuatu seems very efficient, but it remains based to the wide scale diffusion of a unique variety. In order to fit with the international recommendations from the COGENT network, it will be great to diversify the planting material proposed to farmers. CIDP project could help in this process.
Roland, November 10th 2013
Dear Colleagues,
We are presently compiling the chapter 3 of the strategy: “Where we need to be to secure diversity and increase use”, and there is a full section about “Promoting the use of coconut genetic resources”. In the section 3.4.2 Multifunctional landscape management, we use the example of Vanuatu, as in the text given under. This topic was shortly discussed with Tiata when we meet in PNG airport. Please feel free to give your comments, edits and eventually complete it. I would appreciate Dr Melteras or Tiata to appear as one of the contributors of this section.
Here is the text:
The example of Vanuatu well illustrates how the Polymotu concept could be applied to strengthen the involvement of local stakeholders in producing good, diverse and advanced planting material. The Vanuatu Archipelago counts 80 islands, but improved coconut varieties are produced in only one of those, Espiritu Santo. Until recently, VARTC was mainly producing two varieties for farmers: improved Vanuatu Tall (IVTT) and the hybrid between Vanuatu Tall and the Rennell Island Tall (RIT).
Managing a seed garden of Vanuatu Tall for producing this hybrid is challenging: these palms grows very fast; climbing for emasculating the inflorescences is tedious and dangerous. Transportation cost also considerably limits the use of these varieties by farmers.
Instead of using a unique seed garden under the method of assisted pollination, which requires climbing the palm, it should be possible to plant Polymotu units in farmers fields scattered in a tenth of islands. These units will consist in planting 60 Green-coloured IVTT palms and 40 Brown-colored RIT palms. These palms will have to be carefully selected using information on their progenies because they need to be genetically homogeneous for colour. The fields will need to be protected from pollen contamination by any kind of design. These units will produce by open pollinated seednuts of IVTT, RIT and their hybrid IVTTxRIT, in the following way:
- - Green sprouted seedlings harvested on IVTT will be IVTT
- - Brown sprouted seedlings harvested of IVTT will be natural hybrid IVTTxRIT
- - Seedlings harvest on RIT, all of brown of brown green colour, will be either RIT or the hybrid RITxIVTT.
Reply from Jean Pierre Labouisse, November 13th 2013
(translated from French to English)
Hello everyone,
Being a copy of this message, I wish to give my personal point of view, the decision remaining under the responsibility of the VARTC. The proposal from Roland brings the following comments:
- The establishment of RIT in a farming environment is risky. We have no basis for determining whether current RITs - even selected for enhanced tolerance - can withstand high pressure from the Coconut Foliar Decay disease.
- To date, we are not able to know, under the specific conditions of Vanuatu, the potential of production of such a seed garden. Indeed, with such a design using free pollination, we do not know the self-fertilization rate of each variety nor the rate of inter-crossing between trees of the same variety, nor the rate of intervarietal hybridization. All these parameters depend on the varieties, the climate, the season but also the VTT/ RIT ratio, the pollen competition, etc.
- The constraints at each stage are not negligible and, in any case, not evaluated. This includes: production of sufficient RIT seeds through hand pollination, negotiations with growers - and the costly travel required - to determine who is doing what? who cares?, choice of isolated plots from other coconut palms - difficult to find when VTT coconut is covering 80% of the cultivated land, transport and planting without varieties mixing, with a minimum monitoring of the plots by the VARTC, setting up and follow-up of a nursery, transport - always delicate - of germinated nuts (after checking the color of the germ), the need for a solvable demand for hybrids, what guarantee for the durability of the system?
- It is therefore a risky proposition (to my knowledge, such a hybrid seed garden is not in production anywhere else) of which we do not know all the parameters, neither the production potential nor all the constraints.
- It does not seem reasonable to me to put these risks on small growers; I am therefore personally not in favor of the implementation of such a seedgarden system at farm level.
That being said :
- On an experimental basis, I favor the implantation of a seed garden of Improved VTT x RIT using open pollination with parents of different colors (as described by Roland) under the controlled environment of the VARTC research centre (with DFC control). And this could be done for two objectives: a) study of the general feasibility of the operation; b) study of the real number of hybrids produced, which will also give us the rate of self and inter-fertilization under local conditions. This free pollination seedgarden should be compared to a seedgarden in “oriented” pollination (mixture of both varieties with castrated females and free pollination by males). The implementation of such an experiment should be financed in full through COGENT.
- Implementation of decentralized and open-pollinated Improved VTT seed garden is encouraged and should be a national priority. Immediate use of plantations already in place and in production can be envisaged as soon as they have been planted with improved VTTT, whether the field is isolated from other coconut fields or has a significant area (2-3 ha minimum ). The communication with smallholders should be improved to promote the use of this resource with all the advantages described by Roland (reduction of transport costs, involvement of planters) without the risks and unknowns mentioned above and with much simpler conditions of implementation.
Sincerely, Jean Pierre
Reply from Tiata Sileye, November 14th 2013
Dear Roland,
That is the best scenario we could imagine for coconuts. But we cannot ignore the challenges:
- We don’t know much about the severity of DFC on RIT (not resistant or tolerance....) on farmer's field.
- Jean Pierre point out the issue of green and brown sprout, and it will be good to have an idea of that in the station. Up to now, we have not categorise this in our current production of hybrid VTT and RIT. So it will be new activities for us.
- Up to now only 2 plots of VTT were set up recently in Pentecost island (from farmers initiatives). Buts there is need to have close follow up on that which is actually impossible financially
- Is there any fund available to undertake those activities?
