RENOVATION AND REHABILITATION PRACTICES OF UNPRODUCTIVE CACAO PLANTATIONS: STRATEGIES TO MAINTAIN PRODUCTION IN COLOMBIA

The advanced age of cacao plantations (more than 20 years) is one of the main factors that decrease yield. Rehabilitation of these plantations is one of the management practices that is increasingly debated but rarely adopted. Three practices were defined to assess the effect of the renewal and rehabilitation of cacao plantations on fruit yield and quality, including E1: lateral grafting in adult trees, E2: grafting in basal sucker, E3: structural rehabilitation and E4: control treatment without pruning. These practices were implemented at two locations in the Colombian Caribbean region (Zona Bananera, department of Magdalena and Valledupar, department of Cesar). Practices of strong structural pruning and lateral grafting in adult trees, and approach grafting in a basal sucker with renewal of plant material were implemented under a completely randomized design in clones CCN51, EET8 and TSH565 at Zona Bananera, and clones CCN51, EET8 and FLE2 at Valledupar. The control treatment was maintained without intervention using clone CCN51 trees at Zona Bananera and hybrid trees at Valledupar. After three years of performance evaluations, significant differences (P <= 0.05) were found between the implemented strategies, with significantly higher yields in trees intervened with structural pruning. The morphological characteristics of the fruit showed significant differences between the evaluated clones (CCN51, EET8, FLE2 and TSH565) in both locations. Results showed a positive effect of the implementation of a package of rehabilitation/renovation strategies on crop yield, and the lateral graft showed a positive effect on earliness of trees, compared to the basal sucker graft. Clone CCN51 showed higher yields compared to TSH565 and EET8 clones in Zona Bananera and clones TSH565 and FLE2 in Valledupar.