ABIDJAN, Feb 5 - A plague of moth caterpillars that has devastated vegetation and infested villages in Liberia is moving north and is unlikely to attack cocoa plantations in No. 1 grower Ivory Coast, a top researcher said on Thursday.
Millions of caterpillars have eaten the leaves off trees and contaminated water courses with their faeces in Liberia, whose agriculture minister has said they threaten the food security of an estimated 350,000 people.
The creatures were first thought to be army worms, a moth caterpillar, but they were identified this week as the young of another kind of moth, the Achaea catocaloides, which are also known to damage cocoa and other tree crops.
"We heard about the caterpillar invasion in central Liberia in mid-January, and as far as we know the caterpillars are moving towards Sierra Leone and Guinea," Tiemoko Yo, managing director of the National Centre for Agronomic Research (CNRA), told Reuters in an interview.
"But as Guinea and Liberia border us, clearly that constitutes a serious risk," he said.
The region of Ivory Coast bordering central Liberia, around the towns of Man, Danane, Blolequin and Toulepleu, produces around 100,000 tonnes of cocoa and 70,000 tonnes of robusta coffee a year.
Coffee is generally grown further north than cocoa, and could therefore be more at risk if the moths and their caterpillars were to switch direction from their present northwest advance and head east into Ivory Coast.
"Given the direction they are moving in, for the time being we don't think there is a large risk these caterpillars will reach the cocoa belt in Ivory Coast," Yo said.
Ivory Coast produces around 1.4 million tonnes of beans a year, representing around 40 percent of global supply.
Slow harvests since the crop year began in October have already helped push U.S. cocoa futures up by more than 40 percent since November. The contract for May delivery CCc2 was down 0.66 percent at $2,719 a tonne by 1125 GMT on Thursday.
Ivory Coast is also Africa's top rubber producer, and exported over 210,000 tonnes of rubber last year, much of it grown in the west of the country. The major oil palm and banana plantations are further to the south and east.
"What we are hearing from Liberia is that these insects devour everything in their way, all vegetation, including food crops and perennial crops like cocoa, so if they arrive in the cocoa belt they could present a serious risk," Yo said. The CNRA has sent an expert mission to Liberia on a fact-finding mission to find out more about the caterpillar invasion and its effects, and to monitor any movement towards the border with Ivory Coast, Yo said.
Millions of caterpillars have eaten the leaves off trees and contaminated water courses with their faeces in Liberia, whose agriculture minister has said they threaten the food security of an estimated 350,000 people.
The creatures were first thought to be army worms, a moth caterpillar, but they were identified this week as the young of another kind of moth, the Achaea catocaloides, which are also known to damage cocoa and other tree crops.
"We heard about the caterpillar invasion in central Liberia in mid-January, and as far as we know the caterpillars are moving towards Sierra Leone and Guinea," Tiemoko Yo, managing director of the National Centre for Agronomic Research (CNRA), told Reuters in an interview.
"But as Guinea and Liberia border us, clearly that constitutes a serious risk," he said.
The region of Ivory Coast bordering central Liberia, around the towns of Man, Danane, Blolequin and Toulepleu, produces around 100,000 tonnes of cocoa and 70,000 tonnes of robusta coffee a year.
Coffee is generally grown further north than cocoa, and could therefore be more at risk if the moths and their caterpillars were to switch direction from their present northwest advance and head east into Ivory Coast.
"Given the direction they are moving in, for the time being we don't think there is a large risk these caterpillars will reach the cocoa belt in Ivory Coast," Yo said.
Ivory Coast produces around 1.4 million tonnes of beans a year, representing around 40 percent of global supply.
Slow harvests since the crop year began in October have already helped push U.S. cocoa futures up by more than 40 percent since November. The contract for May delivery CCc2 was down 0.66 percent at $2,719 a tonne by 1125 GMT on Thursday.
Ivory Coast is also Africa's top rubber producer, and exported over 210,000 tonnes of rubber last year, much of it grown in the west of the country. The major oil palm and banana plantations are further to the south and east.
"What we are hearing from Liberia is that these insects devour everything in their way, all vegetation, including food crops and perennial crops like cocoa, so if they arrive in the cocoa belt they could present a serious risk," Yo said. The CNRA has sent an expert mission to Liberia on a fact-finding mission to find out more about the caterpillar invasion and its effects, and to monitor any movement towards the border with Ivory Coast, Yo said.
