ABIDJAN, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Rains mixed with long sunny spells across most of Ivory Coast's main cocoa-growing regions helped the development of the October-to-March main crop last week, farmers said on Monday.
Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, is in its rainy season which officially runs from April to mid-November.
Cocoa farmers across the country said the harvest was ongoing but had been modest since the start of the marketing season in early October. It will steadily increase from this week until at least late January with hopes for two big harvests per month from November until January, they said.
Most farmers said they were happy with the amount of rain so far and expected this season's harvest to be more abundant by January than last season due to the quality of small pods.
"The rain and the sun are helping the trees to develop well. We will have a large harvest from November to January at least," said Maurice Gode, who farms near the southern region of Divo, where 32.9 mm of rain fell last week, 5.3 mm above the five-year average.
Farmers gave similar accounts from the western region of Soubre and the southern region of Agboville, where rains were below average, and from the eastern region of Abengourou, where rains were above average.
Farmers in those regions said three consecutive weeks of sunny spells had helped reduce the threat of black pod fungal disease.
In the central-western region of Daloa and in the central region of Bongouanou, rains were above average. Rains were below average in the central region of Yamoussoukro, but farmers from all three of these regions said growing conditions were improving.
Moisture levels had made it difficult to dry pods properly and rains had made rural supply roads less passable around Daloa, said Jean Aka, who farms in the Daloa region, where 44.3 mm of rain fell last week, 18 mm above the average.
"There will be a lot of cocoa in the coming weeks. For the moment we're having trouble getting the beans out of the bush because the roads are bad," he said.
Average temperatures ranged from 26.4 to 28.8 degrees Celsius in Ivory Coast last week. (Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Editing by Alessandra Prentice, Kirsten Donovan)
