Abel Farfan

Abel Farfan, was born in the city of Tingo Maria, Huanuco-Peru. He studied at the National Agrarian University of the Jungle - UNAS, engineer in Renewable Natural Resources, and master's degree in agroecology in the same house of studies, Worked as an agricultural extensionist and facilitator in field schools for farmers ECA`S in the project "Development of the Huallaga basin-2011-2012"; in 2014 worked as a field researcher in the San Martin region in the project: Agroforestry systems and agroforestry proposal Flamengas Universities VLIR-Belgium and Agrarian University La Molina UNALM. He conducted research work (2014-2017) in the USDA-ARS-ICT project: "Identification and selection of cocoa genotypes tolerant to abiotic stress (drought, acid soils and shade levels), From 2013 to 2019 he was responsible researcher of the experimental station El Choclino and germplasm bank of wild cocoa "Amazon Collection", in these experimental stations developed research work with USDA ARS - ICT: "Development of efficient management systems for tropical crops and improvement of biocontrol agents for the sustainability of cocoa".
Participated in three wild cacao expeditions in the Loreto region - Amazonian Trapezoid and Putumayo Peru-Colombia border (2014 and 2015). In 2016-2017 he completed diploma studies in climate change management by the Peruvian society of geographic and environmental engineering. In 2019 he did training courses and worked in the state of Bahia - Brazil for the Renova cacau - Mondelez project in trials of cocoa clones tolerant to water deficit (drought).
From 2022 to the present he has been working for the Bioversity Alliance - CIAT conducting expeditions and collections of native and wild cocoa in the regions of San Martin, Ucayali, Huanuco, Loreto and in the department of Putumayo-Colombia and among other activities related to cocoa as SAF with the tool www.cacaodiversity.org.