Central Agricultural Research Institute CARI

The Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI) located at Suakoko, some 180 km northwest of Monrovia was created in 1980 from the Central Agricultural Experiment Station (CARES) to conduct both adaptive and applied research in agriculture. In the 1980s the Institute had seven commodity-based programmes (rice, cassava, cattle, swine, cocoa, coffee, and vegetables) and planning had been initiated for a cropping systems programme (Francis et al., 1995). However, CARI was devastated by the civil war both in human and physical terms. The physical infrastructure was severely damaged, the contents of buildings looted and professional and technical staff scattered both incountry and abroad and in some instances killed. CARI restarted very limited operations in 2006, focusing on the provision of planting materials for rice (from WARDA), cassava, yams and a limited range of cultivars of maize, beans, and soybeans (from IITA) (Ministry of Agriculture, 2008) a focus which has continued with...