Agriculture officials say a variety of the dasheen plant has proven to be resistance to drought and soil with high salinity and could provide be beneficial to the Caribbean where the agricultural sector depends on seasonal rainfall.

“This crop is already tested in the Caribbean, it was planted in Trinidad and the feedback is very positive,” said Samson Vilvil Fare, the Associate Programme Coordinator, ARD Policy of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.

He told a weeklong Caribbean Pacific Agri-food forum here that the new variety of the dasheen had been developed in the Pacific as part of a project aimed at developing climate change resistance crops and plants that may soon be available to Caribbean farmers through the Caribbean Agriculture Research and Development Institute (CARDI).

Fare explained that the crop was developed by the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees in the…