MEXICO CITY: Mexico's current coffee harvest is expected to shrink 10 percent compared with the previous crop, in part because of the spread of the roya fungus, a top official with the agriculture ministry told Reuters on Tuesday.
Coffee output in Mexico, the region's third-biggest producer, will total 3.9 million 60-kilogram bags during the current 2012/2013 season, down from 4.3 million bags produced during the previous season, said Belisario Dominguez, head of the ministry's productivity and technical development division.
The country's 2013/2014 coffee crop is expected to be in line with the current season, he added.
Dominguez stressed that roya, or coffee leaf rust, is only partially responsible for the downward revision. Other factors include aging plantations and lack of adequate fertilization.
"Now (roya) has combined with the fact that there are older coffee trees, plantings that have not been fertilized and non-existent management," said Dominguez.
As recently as February, national coffee association Amecafe was forecasting a bumper coffee crop of 5.2 million bags, up 20 percent compared with the 2011/2012 harvest.
At that time, the agriculture ministry announced the launch of a campaign against the spread of roya, covering the major coffee-producing states of Chiapas, Veracruz, Puebla and Oaxaca.
Dominguez said the campaign has been extended to a dozen states and includes a total of 110,000 hectares of coffee plantings, and aims to monitor the outbreak and evaluate new strains of roya-resistant coffee trees.
Each year, coffee farmers will be able to replace on average one-fifth of their trees with new varieties, he added.
Amecafe confirmed the presence of roya in Chiapas in late November.
Prior to that, aggressive roya outbreaks were reported in each of Central America's major coffee-producing nations, threatening sharply reduced yields and export revenues.
Mexico and Central America together produce more than a fifth of the world's arabica coffee beans.
<Center><b><i>Copyright Reuters, 2013</b></i><br></center>
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