In Cameroon, cocoa is the main export product after oil. It now represents about 25% of the total value of exports. It is grown in 7 of the 10 regions of Cameroon and covers an area of approximately 400,000 hectares. It involves 600,000 producers, and nearly 8 million people live directly or indirectly from the cocoa economy. The increase in cocoa production is one of the objectives set by the government to improve the economic growth, to meet the low purchasing power of the rural population through a strong and sustainable economy.

Cocoa is a crop native to the forest undergrowth, and is usually grown in extensive agroforestry systems (SAF), with a greater or lesser density of shade trees. In Cameroon, many studies have described the cocoa-based AFS from an agronomic perspective (Jagoret, 2011), ecological perspective (Sonwa, 2001; Snoeck, 2009) and socioeconomic perspective (Gockowski, 2010). These studies show that traditional systems are an important source of biodiversity and can be maintained over very long periods without deterioration of the culture conditions (Jagoret, 2009). However, they are not very productive (± 300 kg of cocoa merchant / ha / year) and does not ensure sufficient income to farmers. Low productivity is one of the causes from an low level of adoption of research achievements by cocoa growers.

Another disadvantage of using high densities of shade is the development of fungal diseases, which are even more marked than farmers have little access to selected resistant and productive plant material.

Very few studies have been conducted directly with farmers to test, with them, the solutions that would help increasing the performance of their systems without losing the ecological balance. The objective of this project is to support researchers and growers to develop innovative multispecies AFS that maximize the yields of cocoa-trees and associated species to find the balance that will give them a decent income without compromising the ecological balance that is also necessary because it ensures the sustainability of their AFS. For this, the project will build on the 168-pilot-plantations network carried with farmers since 2005 by IRAD.

This project will complement the CORAF project which compares the advantages and drawbacks between productivity and biodiversity in the heavily shaded cocoa systems of Cameroon with those of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana that are very little shaded.