Bolivar, December 10^th 2009. Colombian Agriculture and Livestock Institute, ICA, after three years working with the community accomplished to start an interinstitutional project for renovation of 250 hectares of avocado affected by pests and diseases in order to improve phytosanitary, productive and commercialization aspects in this crop, in which 8.000 families depend on, in Carmen de Bolívar and Ovejas municipalities.
 

This project will last five months, and is part of a continuous job in phytosanitary matters that ICA has been developing in this zone of the country, where avocado crop is planted in an estimated area of 5.500 ha where it is being affected producing dried or descendent death of trees generating estimated losses in twelve billion pesos annually.
 

“In parallel, 250 avocado producing families will be trained in Agriculture Good Practices management, so they will have tools that allow them to combat pests and diseases that affect the crop, which has been attacked by fungus that cause rots, that on top of lack of agronomic management have generated losses to farmers”, added ICA general manager, Luis Fernando Caicedo Lince.
 

Likewise, it is planned to protect 12.000 trees by using organisms for biological control as Trichoderma spp. and mycorhiza fungus to counteract fungal pathogens that have been severely affecting avocado crop.

This project is executed with the technical interinstitutional committee that is formed by the secretary of agriculture and rural development of Bolivar and Umatas from Carmen de Bolívar and San Jacinto and the company Coagral as a contractor of the operating firm PBA.
 

The financial support for this project implementation was in charge of International Organization for migrations, with resources of the People cooperation agency of the United States, USAID.