Agriculture students from the New Amsterdam Multilateral, Hope Secondary and President’s College were given the opportunity to observe various coconut cultivation practices during a tour of the Hope coconut estate on Thursday.
Students from the various schools as they were being given a tour of the Hope Coconut Estate.
The educational trip was part of the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute’s (CARDI) open day exercise.
CARDI’s country representative Dr. Cyril Roberts said the agency decided to use the open day to target the students in order to highlight the efforts being made to resuscitate the coconut industry in Guyana and the Caribbean.
“We in collaboration with the Hope Estate visit areas in the country that have high productivity. Select those trees that are most productive, take nuts from them, bring them and plant them here in a nursery. This nursey is intended to demonstrate to the country that coconut seedling production is a lucrative venture to be in,” Dr. Roberts explained.
It was pointed out by Dr. Roberts that the coconut industry is a very profitable one. He noted that the Hope estate is the largest of its kind in the Caribbean and that it is very important that students get involved and be exposed to the industry at a young age.
CARDI Country Representative, Dr. Cyril Roberts.
Dr. Roberts also highlighted that come 2018, CARDI will be collaborating with the Ministry of Education to roll out various projects into schools.
“How we do our work and get students, pupils interested, motivated and involved is something that we do deliberately, and we do not have to wait for CARDI Open Day for that. In fact, I will further say that part of our work programme deliberately next year, we will do projects directly with the schools,” he stated.
Also as part of CARDI open day exercise, the top performing student at the recent Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination, Eion Jotis of New Amsterdam Multilateral School was rewarded by the agency. The reward was for Jotis’ outstanding performance in Agricultural Science where he gained a Double Award.
CARDI Country Representative, Dr. Cyril Roberts handing over a reward to Eion Jotis in the presence of his parents and his teacher.
