Exciting milestone! The partnering farmers of COPAK, subsidiary of Envirium Life Sciences based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, received their first grafted cocoa trees. This step is the outcome of a close collaboration with Puratos, our trusted and valued client and partner, to provide smallholders with more resilient and productive cocoa crops.

Back in March, a dozen agronomists from COPAK received a grafting training from an Ivorian expert: “By systematically observing and selecting vigorous and high-performing cocoa stems, both Puratos’ and COPAK’s agronomists successfully started cultivating a new lineage of cocoa trees with enhanced resistance to regional pests and diseases and augmented production yields,” says Dimitri Moreels, co-CEO of Envirium Life Sciences and founder of COPAK.

During this one-month training, COPAK’s agronomists were able to graft 15,000 trees: “The trees were grown in our nursery. They are currently being distributed to the farmers. We are going to monitor their evolution and see whether we can further improve our technique. Grafting will allow our partnering farmers to harvest cocoa already after 24 to 30 months instead of 4 to 5 years, so a first evaluation is expected during 2027,” explains Antoine De Halloy, Agri manager at Envirium Life Sciences.

“Beyond improving yields,” explains Dimitri Moreels, “one of our major goals is also to reduce the carbon footprint of the cocoa value chain. The good news is that a more productive cocoa tree increases substantially the income of the farmer on his limited available agricultural land and decreases the ecological impact of cocoa cultivation.