Environments Conducive to Coffea liberica in Martinique

Abstract

Martinique was recognised as a pioneer in the insular Caribbean for coffee cultivation in the early 18th century. The island is known for its legendary "Martinique" coffee dating from that time but it no longer has coffeegrowing industries. As part of a project to revive this cultivation, a geographic information system (GIS) was developed in order to carry out a pedoclimatic zoning and to find environments favourable to species of the Coffea genus. A first zoning resulted in an inability to produce quality Arabica coffee for the future, with rainfall representing a major limiting factor. Because the island contains the three most cultivated species of coffee in the world, a second zoning was carried out and resulted in real but limited opportunities for Coffea canephora. A third zoning has now been carried out for the last exogenous species of the Coffea genus: Coffea liberica. The edaphoclimatic requirements of C. liberica have also been defined using the world's scientific literature. Numerical data (isohyets, isotherms, geomorphology) also come from Martinican institutions with expertise in the production of environmental data (IRD, IGN, Météo-France, DEAL, CTM) 1 . This data was processed using the GIS software: QGIS version 2.18.14. The pedoclimatic zoning of Coffea liberica reveals more possibilities for cultivation and it appears to be more suited to the environmental conditions of the island than Arabica and Canephora. Based on the forecasts of the National Meteorological Services for the 2071-2100 time horizon, we carried out an agro-climatic zoning showing increased possibilities for the production of this coffee in future years.