The Ekiti state in Nigeria manages to dodge the little dry season on an average year and, usually, accumulates water in the soil for several months in a row ahead of the long dry season, which can start as early as now.
This year, the Ekiti state experienced a negative anomaly in precipitation during July and the first part of August, which completely zeroed the water resilience accumulated up to the end of June.
Consequently, trees can rely only on water accumulated in September and October to build up resilience, significantly less time than normal.
However, thanks to the excellent rainfall over the last two months, particularly throughout September, trees in the Ekiti state of Nigeria ended up being able to build up a lot of water in the soil.
Currently, the soil water resilience for cacao trees in this state is roughly two months, which is almost two weeks longer than on an average season.
This extra resilience will help the trees to properly feed the pods for the April arrivals and should help mitigate the negative effect of the long dry season on the survival rate of the pod generations corresponding to the harvest between late February and May.
