{"id":10736,"date":"2024-09-03T20:14:07","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T20:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/?p=10736"},"modified":"2024-09-04T14:49:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T14:49:08","slug":"world-coconut-day-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/2024\/09\/03\/world-coconut-day-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"WORLD COCONUT DAY 2024 by Carol-Faye Bynoe-George"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Being one of the most versatile fruit in agriculture, one of the stablers of the economy for many tropical countries to include the Caribbean region and is respected for its nutritional value, the coconut is celebrated annually on 2nd September to emphasize and promote the importance of coconuts.<\/p>\n<p>The coconut palm (<em>Cocos nucifera<\/em>) mainly native to the tropics such as Southeast Asia, islands between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.\u00a0 \u00a0The fruit, called coconut is mainly consumed for its water (coconut water) believed by many to be a natural cleanser for the kidneys, its milk widely used for cooking\/culinary, its oil used for many internal and external health benefits and its tasty meat called kennel.<\/p>\n<p id=\"TOC_TITLE_HDR_1\">In 2016, Antigua and Barbuda were victims of the lethal yellowing disaster that destroyed almost 100% of its native palms.\u00a0 To counteract this plight the Ministry of Agriculture through its Forestry Unit invested in the procurement of ten thousand Malaysian coconut seeds.\u00a0 These seeds were cared for by the ministry&#8217;s forestry\/nursery staff and Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).<\/p>\n<p>In 2022, after the seeds reached mature seedling stage, the Forestry Unit launched its Coconut rehabilitation Project.\u00a0 With more that fifty participants and over five thousand seedlings distributed the project is now in its monitoring and evaluation phase.\u00a0 The Forestry Unit is appealing to the participants who were already involved in this project to honour their obligations outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and to remain committed to the cause.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/elements-resized.envatousercontent.com\/envato-shoebox\/twenty20\/production\/uploads\/items\/5bbc1b0e-eb8c-44f3-ab1d-d7c94a9b4e5a\/source?w=500&amp;cf_fit=scale-down&amp;mark-alpha=18&amp;mark=https%3A%2F%2Felements-assets.envato.com%2Fstatic%2Fwatermark4.png&amp;q=85&amp;format=auto&amp;s=45f9d48d9942624d0ad841244fe007bee2931f7dbccb1e10facb255eaff89d8e\" alt=\"Preview: Green coconuts textured background.\" width=\"211\" height=\"140\" \/> \u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/elements-resized.envatousercontent.com\/envato-shoebox\/d285\/00c0-cd60-4b13-b441-97f95b9184c7\/7M301962-Edit.jpg?w=500&amp;cf_fit=scale-down&amp;mark-alpha=18&amp;mark=https%3A%2F%2Felements-assets.envato.com%2Fstatic%2Fwatermark4.png&amp;q=85&amp;format=auto&amp;s=4f61f89a4fe1405815f81ae34ee815ee52e41548295c504ac812eac4fea35831\" alt=\"Preview: Fresh ripe coconut on the tree, coconut cluster on coconut tree. Palm tree branches\" width=\"93\" height=\"140\" \/>\u00a0 <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/elements-resized.envatousercontent.com\/envato-shoebox\/0576\/55f9-8a2e-4907-ac1b-ebbd57372179\/9D1A3906.jpg?w=500&amp;cf_fit=scale-down&amp;mark-alpha=18&amp;mark=https%3A%2F%2Felements-assets.envato.com%2Fstatic%2Fwatermark4.png&amp;q=85&amp;format=auto&amp;s=12ec3fccf3eeab6b29550d2afe159b22d98ae4f5a283af6b3627cb1fb386e9e8\" alt=\"Preview: Coconuts cracked and whole on black background, top view\" width=\"93\" height=\"140\" \/> \u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/elements-resized.envatousercontent.com\/envato-shoebox\/7259\/a250-5ad7-4434-9c04-a85b54484de9\/NFS_0957.jpg?w=500&amp;cf_fit=scale-down&amp;mark-alpha=18&amp;mark=https%3A%2F%2Felements-assets.envato.com%2Fstatic%2Fwatermark4.png&amp;q=85&amp;format=auto&amp;s=e561176ce652457be2c046d894b5cfd91eb81364f3e7bdd18bfce59f97e73c58\" alt=\"Preview: raw coconuts\" width=\"207\" height=\"138\" \/><\/p>\n<div data-preamp=\"serena-chatbot\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being one of the most versatile fruit in agriculture, one of the stablers of the economy for many tropical countries to include the Caribbean region and is respected for its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cardi","category-news-notices"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10736"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10741,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10736\/revisions\/10741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}