The green gold makes its way in the Department of Cauca

• The investment of more than 6,500 million pesos from Fondo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación of the General System of Royalties-SGR, impacted 11 Hass avocado-producing municipalities in the Department of Cauca.
• Producers, agricultural extensionists, students, and the department's institutional framework benefited.

 

Popayán, Cauca. June 30, 2023. Corporación colombiana de investigación agropecuaria – AGROSAVIA finalized with the Hass avocado fair, the project to improve the productivity and competitiveness of the crop in the department of Cauca, a joint effort with the Government of Cauca through the Economic Development Secretariat, Universidad del Cauca – Unicauca and financed by the General System of Royalties from 2019.

The event, which took place on June 28 and 29 in the city of Popayán, was the setting to disclose to the general public and the entire productive chain of the department the results obtained after four years of development and validation of technologies for the cultivation of Hass avocado in Cauca.

Due to the low yields reported for the department of Cauca and the socio-economic context of the crop in the region, in the first instance, the development and then the validation of technologies aimed at the implementation of phytosanitary, irrigation, nutrition, and post-harvest management practices was required. This is to improve the level of technification of plantations and increase their productive potential based on the knowledge of the territory and suitable conditions for cultivation, accompanied by chaining socio-economic development processes and strengthening the National Subsystem of Agricultural Extension.

The project called "Development and validation of technologies to increase the productivity of the Hass avocado crop in the department of Cauca" was executed by AGROSAVIA and included the participation of researchers from the Palmira and La Selva Research Centers and the Popayán Headquarters of AGROSAVIA, to respond to the territorial needs and demands defined and prioritized by the actors of the Hass avocado chain in the Research, Development and Innovation Agenda. This agenda is part of the CTeI Strategic Plan for the Agricultural sector - PECTIA, at the regional and national levels.

The project was developed based on 6 components that allowed intervening the region's production systems and validating the technological offers for cultivation. As an initial process, technological tools were generated to identify suitable areas for establishing the Hass avocado crop in the prioritized municipalities. Then, the technical bases for nutrition and irrigation management were given, considering environmental and soil conditions, the nutritional status of the crop, and the nutritional requirements for optimal fertilization. Other aspects considered within the project were the cultural control strategy for pests of quarantine importance and monitoring methods. For these three components, the AGROHASS technological platform was generated, which consolidates the results obtained and seeks to facilitate access to information by technical and professional producers.

Within the project, actions to identify and evaluate methods for fruit disease management were also carried out, as they reduce the commercial quality for the export market. In the post-harvest component, a protocol for sampling and analyzing fruits was established, allowing determining their quality according to criteria associated with sensory, physicochemical, and nutritional attributes. This is done so producers can take advantage of all the crop production, including discarded fruits, to market as fresh or processed fruit.

As a projection to continue accompanying the development of the Hass avocado productive system for the department of Cauca, the implementation of a next phase focused on innovation management and linking knowledge accompanying the adoption of technologies generated in the four years of execution is expected of this project.