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Coconut Plantations
Coconut is a perennial crop which has a prolonged reproductive phase of 44 months. Weather and climate affects all stages of the long development cycle extending to 44 months and thus there is likely to be extended predictability based on climate variability.
Project Progress
Work on quality control, climatological analysis and climate changes assessments are reported elsewhere here. We have published two journal and two conference papers. We have also written four technical reports. Articles have been published in several newspapers, magazines and internet. We have presented our work at Universities, CRI, TRI and the Mahaweli Authority.
Dr. Sarath Peiris visited the International Research Institute for climate prediction for three weeks and Dr. Neil Fernando for a week. Dr. Peiris’s visit there led to a research paper on crop-climate interaction in collaboration with Dr. James Hansen. Dr. Neil Fernando visit led to a draft on the valuation of climate impacts.
Prediction of Annual National Coconut Production based on Climate
Accurate forecasting of Annual National Coconut Production (ANCP) is important for national agricultural planning and negotiating forward contracts with foreign buyers. Climate and the long term trends (attributed to “technology”) are major factors that determine ANCP. The climate effect was estimated by regressing production data that had been de-trended to remove the “technology effects” with quarterly rainfall in the year prior to harvest in principal coconut growing regions which are all in the low-lands. The technology effect was estimated from the historical log-linear trends. The regression model that integrates both climate and technology effects developed to predict ANCP with high fidelity.
