Shade tree management affects fruit abortion, insect pests and pathogens of cacao

By M. Bos, I. Steffan‐Dewenter, T. Tscharntke. 2007

127 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mortality of cacao fruits caused by early fruit abortion or insect and pathogen attacks was investigated in differently managed agroforestry systems in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Nine agroforestry systems shaded by three different types of tree stands were selected, which represented a decrease in structural heterogeneity: forest remnants, diverse planted trees and one or two species of planted leguminose trees. After standardized manual cross-pollination, the development of 600 fruits on 54 trees (6 trees per agroforest) was followed during 18 weeks of fruit development. In total, 432 of all fruits were lost before maturity, which seriously undermined yields. The proportion of harvested fruits per tree (overall average: 27 4%) was not affected by canopy type. Although shade cover did not have a significant effect, losses due to fruit abortion were most likely under forest shade, where nitrogen-fixing leguminose shade trees were absent. Fruit losses due to pathogenic infections and insect attacks increased with the homogenization of the agroforests, supporting the hypothesis that agricultural homogenization increases risks of pest outbreaks. In conclusion, shade management may be improved to increase yields from cacao using highly diversified natural shade agroforestry systems. # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subfields: Ecology, Horticulture, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/549e997e3d273a025deb288cdcf67332e4d7ad45

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Horticulture

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Effects of an experimental drought on the functioning of a cacao agroforestry system, Sulawesi, Indonesia (2010, background): “Bos et al. (2007) and Y. Clough (unpublished results) both investigated cacao pests and pathogens in the vicinity of our study site and also reported a high proportion of damage caused by black pod, cacao pod borer, and Helopeltis (see also Hebbar, 2007).”
Experimental evidence for stronger cacao yield limitation by pollination than by plant resources (2010, background): “…beyond 40% did not result in any significant increases, these differences clearly indicate that natural pollination levels in cacao (around 10% of all flowers on a tree; Falque et al., 1995; Bos et al., 2007b; de Almeida and Valle, 2007) are likely to fall very short of the pollination optimum.”