The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in collaboration with Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has organized training workshops for a total of 785 supervisors under the mass cocoa spraying exercise to be commenced in August in the Ashanti region. The supervisors were trained on the use of ‘Akate Master’ to control capsid bugs (Akate) after two years of controlling the pest with ‘Confidor’ in the region. Dr Joseph Ackonor, Head of Entomology at the Cocoa Research Institute, who announced this, said the training of the supervisors was aimed at sensitizing them on the effective use of the chemical to avoid wastage and ensure higher yields. He was speaking at a training workshop for 138 spraying gang supervisors at Juaso in the Asante-Akim South district on Tuesday. According to Dr Ackonor, the switchover from one chemical to another in the fight against the pest had become necessary as the pest developed resistance to a particular chemical after sometime. He noted that since the existence of the capsid bugs was a threat to the cocoa industry, COCOBOD had made it a policy to rotate the use of ‘Akate Master’, ‘Actara’ and ‘Confidor’ in the various regions in order to keep the pest under control. Source: GNA