A new soil map for Trinidad and To­ba­go — said to be the first since 1962 — is set to play a piv­otal role in ad­vanc­ing sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and re­duc­ing the na­tion­al food im­port bill.

The ini­tia­tive was launched to mark the first an­niver­sary of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween YARA/Trin­gen and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). The event took place at Trin­gen’s Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ties last week.

Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture, Pro­fes­sor Mark Wud­di­vi­ra, said the up­dat­ed soil map would be an es­sen­tial tool in im­prov­ing land man­age­ment and guid­ing fu­ture agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.