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Coconut production is significantly constrained by agricultural pests. Given that management of these pests is influenced by gender differences, there was a need to assess farmers’ knowledge about coconut pests, farm-level pest management strategies, and institutions offering training to farmers to develop an ecologically sound management strategy. To achieve this, we surveyed six coconut growing districts, three each from the Western and Central Regions of Ghana using face-to-face interviews, discussions, and direct observations. In addition, a multistage sampling technique was used to sample the coconut farmers. The sample population for each town was determined using a proportion to population size approach. The sample population was randomly drawn from each town/village using a sampling frame based on the agricultural sector records. Most of the farmers mentioned Oryctes monoceros as the most important pest of coconut. Significantly, more females than males mentioned weaver birds in their plantations (p = 0.035). Women who did not mention pests in their farms were significantly higher than men (P = 0.007). We observed a significant difference (p = 0.018) between male and female farmers who used indigenous knowledge (i.e., knowledge accumulated by an indigenous (local) population over generations of living in a certain area). However, pest management strategy did not vary in Central Region. Our findings showed that some of the farmers did not use any of the management strategies, suggesting that future studies and training are required to develop sustainable pest management strategies for the coconut pests.

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Coconut is recognized for its popularity in contributing to food and nutritional security. It generates income and helps to improve rural livelihood. However, there is a rise in the number of plant diseases due to globalization, including lethal yellowing-like diseases (LYD). A clear understanding of climate-suitable areas for disease invasion is essential for implementing quarantine measures. Therefore, we modelled in Maximum Entropy to establish habitat suitability of LYD under current and future climate change scenarios using three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) (1.26, 3.70 and 5.85) for three time periods (2041-2060, 2061-2080 and 2081-2100). The area under the curve value for LYD was 0.98, suggesting that the model’s performance was very good. The predictor variables that most influenced LYD projections were minimum temperature of the coldest month (88.4%) and the precipitation of the warmest quarter (7.3%). Outside its current range, the model projected climate-suitable areas of LYD in Australia, Asia and South America. Our study highlights potential climate suitable and unsuitable areas of LYD, and provides useful information for increasing quarantine measures. Also, the potential expansion of the disease into uninfected areas suggests that future research should focus on the development of resistant or tolerant coconut varieties against the disease.