Accra, May 31, GNA - A workshop to address the problems of low productivity and cocoa quality in 14 cocoa growing countries across Africa, Asia and Latin-America opened in Accra on Monday.

Known as the biodiversity project, it aims to ensure sustainable income for cocoa farmers while working to improve quality through research and development of high yielding and disease resistant cocoa varieties. Addressing the opening session, Mr Anthony Fofie, Chief Executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board, said there was the urgent need to respond to global awareness of sustainable development of satisfying present needs without compromising the ability of future generations.

He said the improvement in productivity and quality would improve farmers' income but current challenges of poor planting material and low nutrient states of soils were making the dreams difficult. "It is in the light of this that I embrace this project which is aimed at obtaining more sustainable production of cocoa at lower cost by making better use of cocoa germplasm," he said.

Mr Fofie said improved cocoa productivity would also serve as an incentive to attract the youth into cocoa cultivation, thereby addressing the problem of predominance of old cocoa farmers in cocoa production. He said the project had helped the Ghana Cocoa Board to introduce new cocoa varieties, trained some young scientists and carried out genetic fingerprinting of cocoa germplasm collections of Ghana and West Africa. Mr Fofie expressed the hope that the workshop would provide the opportunity to discuss and cross fertilised ideas on how to enhance productivity and quality of cocoa production. 31 May 10