Preface

This book, "Shifting Frontiers of *Theobroma cacao* – Opportunities and Challenges for Production", presents a comprehensive perspective that acknowledges the interactions of changing environmental conditions (climate, soil, and agroecological), cocoa production, and sustainability.

The book is short, clear, readable, and accessible, and covers a broad range of topics to quicken the pace of understanding and knowledge (scholarship) among agroclimatologists, social and natural scientists, policymakers, and activists concerned with burning issues of changing environment conditions and their current and future implications for cocoa production and sustainability.

The chapters are organized into four sections: "Climate Change as a Threat to Growing Area Suitability for Cocoa", "ICT Role in Advancing Climate Change Adaptation and Climate Mitigation", "Climate Change, Crop Protection and the Environment", and "Cocoa Cultivation: Role in Peace Building". The chapters inform, stimulate, and provoke thought as well as actions and partnerships relevant to addressing challenges and constraints to cocoa production in the era of a changing climate. It provides insights into the need for cocoa actors within the cocoa sector to strengthen climate mitigation and resilience building and to come to grips with the realities, magnitude, and inevitable persistence of climate challenge to cocoa production and sustainability. The authors synthesize and deploy current scholarship on climate change and its implications and ramifications for the crop *Theobroma* in ways to promote and activate intelligent thought, collective actions, and partnerships for cocoa production sustainability. The book is invaluable to scientists, researchers, agriculturists (cocoa farmers), and students, as it illuminates the challenges presented by climate change for cocoa production and sustainability.

As the editors of this book volume, we would like to express my profound thankfulness and gratitude to all the authors, reviewers, and staff at IntechOpen. We all are grateful and appreciative of their work and ideas.

> **Samuel Ohikhena Agele** The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria

**Olufemi Samuel Ibiremo, Ph.D.** Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan, Nigeria

**1**

Section 1

Climate Change as a Threat

to Growing Area Suitability

for Cocoa

### Section 1
