A new soil map for Trinidad and To­ba­go — said to be the first since 1962 — is set to play a piv­otal role in ad­vanc­ing sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and re­duc­ing the na­tion­al food im­port bill.

The ini­tia­tive was launched to mark the first an­niver­sary of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween YARA/Trin­gen and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). The event took place at Trin­gen’s Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ties last week.

Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture, Pro­fes­sor Mark Wud­di­vi­ra, said the up­dat­ed soil map would be an es­sen­tial tool in im­prov­ing land man­age­ment and guid­ing fu­ture agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

He not­ed that Trinidad alone con­tains 125 dis­tinct soil types — an un­com­mon di­ver­si­ty that de­mands care­ful man­age­ment to en­sure long-term pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“If we are talk­ing about food se­cu­ri­ty, we can­not achieve it with­out un­der­stand­ing our soils and hav­ing the sci­ence to back it up,” Pro­fes­sor Wud­di­vi­ra said.

UWI Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, com­mend­ed Trin­gen for in­vest­ing in the project, adding that UWI re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment through re­search and in­no­va­tion.

Soil sci­en­tist Gabriel­la De Souza of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries said the min­istry ful­ly sup­ports the ini­tia­tive, de­scrib­ing it as a key step to­wards da­ta-dri­ven pol­i­cy­mak­ing for sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion. —Shas­tri Boodan