Accra, October 22, 2008 - A serious outbreak of swollen shoot disease in western Ghana threatens to prevent the world's No. 2 cocoa grower from achieving its goal of a 1 million tonne harvest by 2010, a senior industry official said on Wednesday.
"It is a serious situation ... this time round we're having to deal with an unprecedented outbreak that has the potential of drastically reducing our projected 1 million tonnes target for the next two years," Francis Nsiah, executive director of the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD) control unit of industry regulator Cocobod, told Reuters.
He added Ghana would spend 15 million new cedis of its expected FOB earnings from cocoa this year to tackle the outbreak.
Swollen shoot is a viral disease spread by insects that attacks the leaves and shoots of cocoa trees and can kill the trees within two years. The only solution is to remove the infected trees and replant new ones after treating the area.
Nsiah said in an interview that at least 20,000 hectares of cocoa in the top-yielding western region alone had been infected by the disease. The western region produced nearly 30 percent of Ghana's 2007/08 main crop of more than 660,000 tonnes.
"It's a big problem, but again, we don't want to create a panic situation because we now have a strategy to confront the disease and we hope to do so in good time," he added.
His CSSVD control unit had declared the Esam district, a high yielding western region zone, a "mass infection area".
The Enchi area, also in the western region, had also been badly hit, he added.
Nsiah said that unlike previous outbreaks, where the signs of the disease could be clearly seen on the leaves, it was proving difficult to detect in the current western outbreak.
"We suspect it could be a new strain this time around and efforts have been initiated to study it thoroughly," he said.
Ghana's cocoa generally attracts higher prices than other origins because of its high quality.
Yearly output has averaged 670,000 tonnes in the last five years and the country had set an ambitious plan to raise production to 1 million tonnes by 2010, through increased fertilisation, improved farming practices and ensuring good revenues for growers and other industry players.