Fiji Thinks Again About

Cocoa

(From Our Own Correspondent)

Msuva, Nov. 4.

ANY years ago Fiji had what promised to become a flourishing cocoa industry. Plant disease

killed it and there has been no sub sequent attempt to revive it on a large scale.

There have been occasional wist ful glances towards Western Samoa, where cocoa has been booming for years, and the question came up again last week after the High Com

missioner for the Western Pacific (Mr. R. C. S. Stanley) said that BSI hoped to be doing something with cocoa.

Lately the New Zealand press has been publicising Samoa’s “perfect cocoa tree”—an allegedly remarkable product selected from many thousands of specimens at the New Zealand Reparations Estates in Upolu. Why, Fiji wondered, couldn’t the local Agriculture Department wangle a cutting or two from Samoa?

The Agriculture Department re plied that at its Plant Introduction Station at Naduruloulou there are 40 flourishing young trees raised from seed of Samoa’s “perfect cocoa trees”. The seed came over in 1950, and Samoa has promised cuttings as soon as they can be made available.

Though the young seedling trees are growing well it will be some years before their individual characteristics of yield and disease resistance can be compared with those of the parent tree. The cut tings, however, would carry the full characteristics of the strain, which is described as a hybrid of high pro ductivity and disease resistance.

Pastor lan Kleinig of the Lutheran Mission, Irelya, N.G., is on furlough in Australia with his family.