The lychee sector in difficulty
 
To ensure its food security, Madagascar has developed several cash crops such as cloves, pepper, vanilla, and lychee, of which it is the world's leading exporting country to the European Union. This cash crop provides a significant source of income for producers who are generally small farmers. But production conditions are not well controlled, which lead to performance and irregularity problems in production and export.
However, this production must meet the quantitative, qualitative and market maturity requirements. 20,000 tons are expected each year with well-defined quality standards for fruit size and sulfur residue limits. Then, the fruits are destined to be sold during the holidays at the end of the year. The harvest must then match this schedule.
  
In response to the difficulties of the lychee sector in Madagascar, Aina began in 2016 a thesis entitled "Predicting and evaluating (quantitatively and qualitatively) lychee harvesting in a complex system at the regional scale", co-supervised by the CTHT (Horticultural Technical Center of Tamatave) and CIRAD. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the factors that influence the quantity and quality of lychee harvest at the tree, crop system, and production area level to evaluate production and to determine developed a methodology for forecasting litchi harvest in Madagascar.
 
Aina is very satisfied with the CTHT-CIRAD joint supervision. "On the one hand, I have the empirical approach of the CTHT, which has been working for the last 15 years on the lychee industry in Madagascar. They helped me get in touch with the producers and set up my test plots. They also have an important database that I used in my research. On the other hand, I need the close supervision of specialized CIRAD researchers to value all these results and to design a crop forecasting model. "
 
A mission to Reunion to finalize her work
 
Aina's mission to Reunion Island in April 2018 had two main objectives : to finalize her work on the characterization of litchi-based cropping systems in Madagascar and to compare the performance of these systems in terms of flowering and fruiting as well as the quality of the fruits. During her stay, the Malagasy doctoral student was supervised by two researchers from the HortSys Unit at CIRAD Reunion : Thierry Michels for the finalization of the characterization of the cropping systems and Frédéric Normand for the statistical analysis of the lychee blooming, fruiting and ripening data. Statistical processing of these data has revealed significant differences between cropping systems. The rest of her research will focus on the differentiation of fruit growth in relation to climate data.

"What do I get out of my mission ? Very interesting exchanges with researchers, students and PhD students present in Reunion. And also opportunities to value my results and discover work similar to mine, "concludes Aina with a smile.
 
Aina should support her thesis at the University of Antananarivo in early 2019.
 
Aina's mission was conducted as part of the INTERREG-V Qualinnov 2 project, co-funded by the European Union and the Reunion Region.