Nigeria's main cocoa regions are enjoying drier weather with long sunny spells after months of higher-than-average rainfall and farmers said on Wednesday the change would help sustain pod growth.
"The rains have stopped but there is enough moisture in the soil to sustain the trees. The sunshine will enable the flowers and small pods to develop," said Bojor Ndifor, a cocoa farmer in the south-eastern town of Ikom near the border with Cameroon.
Reuters reporters who visited farms in the region three weeks ago said there were plenty of flowers and small pods on trees. Growers said the cocoa should be ready for harvest in the first quarter of next year. Ndifor said the hot sunny weather would also allow their cocoa nurseries to blossom into seedlings, ready in good time for farmers to replace aged trees and expand their plantations.
Further northeast in the state of Taraba, about 400 km from the port of Calabar - Nigeria's second main export route after Lagos - farmers said the harmattan winds had begun sweeping down from the Sahara, causing high daytime temperatures that help the fermenting and drying of cocoa beans.
"We are in the harmattan season now. The sunshine is good. The winds make beans dry faster, making the quality high," Noah Bala told Reuters by telephone from Mararaba village in Donga district of Taraba.
BLACK POD: Drier weather would also help check the spread of black pod, a fungal disease that thrives in moisture, destroying thousands of cocoa pods, growers and traders said.
"Heavy rainfall made it difficult for many farmers to spray their plantations, even where they managed to spray the trees, the chemical was washed away by the rain, now they can have some respite," said buyer Jacob Abiodun from Akure, capital of the main growing state of Ondo, in the south-west.
However, Akinwale Ojo, executive secretary of the Cocoa Association of Nigeria (CAN) said farmers could do with some intermittent rainfall, which would help boost the light crop, harvested from April to September.
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