CATIE student's thesis makes important contributions at the Dominican Chocolate Festival

• The Dominican Chocolate Festival is an initiative that aims to promote and raise awareness about the value of cocoa in the Dominican Republic and its contribution to the local economy.

August 3, 2022.  Through his thesis for his master's degree in Economics, Development and Climate Change at CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), Enelvi Brito participated as a speaker in the presentation "Prevention of Monilia: Lessons learned from other productive sectors" at the Dominican Chocolate Festival 2022, to raise awareness and sensitize about the socioeconomic impact of moniliasis in cocoa plantations.

Faced with the latent threat of the entry of moniliasis into the Dominican Republic and the complex state of cocoa plantation management, the student's interest and motivation arose to develop a research project to generate knowledge and information for decision making in this sector.

Brito's participation during the conference generated special interest due to the contributions offered by his thesis, such as the elaboration of an index of vulnerability to moniliasis in the different producing regions, and the epidemiological modeling of the disease progression in an average farm.

They also highlighted the proposal to build a deterministic model to project over 10 years the evolution of national production, employment generation, farm-level income, value added in the value chain, foreign exchange generation from exports and the sector's contribution to the national economy.

"Presenting the results of the research at this festival is an opportunity to grow as a professional and show decision makers the need for responsible intervention in the country's cocoa plantations in order to avoid accumulated losses over 10 years of more than 1.3 billion dollars. It is an opportunity for other researchers to learn about, validate and implement the methodology used in the research," explained Brito.

In turn, Brito highlighted the support provided by CATIE to present the results of his work in such an important festival, where he thanked mainly the support of researchers from the Center such as Felipe Peguero, Luis Orozco, Mariela Leandro and Falguni Guharay.

It is hoped that these results will help decision-makers understand the economic and social damage caused by this disease in the cocoa sector and why there should be measures to contain, disseminate and eradicate moniliasis, as well as an intervention plan for the plantations by government agencies and other actors in the value chain.