who estimated the average potential loss of several food and cash crops over
a three-year period through animal pests to be 17.6%, while fungi
and bacteria, viruses as well as weeds could potentially account
for 14.9%, 3.1%, and 31.8%, respectively. Also, farms around the
BCA were infested with pathogens such as Phytophthora megakarya
(causing the black pod disease), which is the most important
pathogen of cocoa in West Africa (Guest 2007; Ploetz 2007)