The Ugandan manual sets the conditions for canephora, item by item. Each governs a precise moment in the tree's cycle.

• SoilFertile, airy, well-draining, slightly acid, pH 5.5 to 6.5. At least 1 to 1.5 meters deep in humid zones and 3 meters in dry zones: the less it rains, the higher the depth requirement. Never “with its feet in water.” The ideal is red volcanic earth or sandy loam.
• AltitudeFrom 900 to 1,500 meters.
• TemperatureFrom 22 to 28°C. Above 30°C, flowers abort. Fruit set, that is, the passage from flower to fruit, falls with photosynthesis. Heat does not slow the tree, it takes its harvest. Frost kills it at around 0°C.
• RainFrom 1,200 to 1,800 mm, well distributed over nine months. Distribution matters as much as the total, because it is rain that triggers flowering and fills the fruit.

The manual puts a figure on what “well distributed” means: a good rain of 25 mm every fourteen days during cherry development. That makes about 20 liters, one jerrycan, per tree.

And if this rain fails? Flowering spreads over months, so the harvest becomes uneven and costly, since the same trees have to be picked over several times. Drought defoliates the tree and attracts mites, leaf miners, borers and bark beetles. Excess rain has the opposite fault: it makes the tree grow wood instead of flowers.

The optima published elsewhere are hotter and wetter than Uganda, which is a reminder that these figures describe a country as much as a species. Coste gives 24-26°C and 2,000 mm over nine to ten months in the equatorial forest zone. Yang's review goes up to 30°C by day and 26 by night, with 85% relative humidity and 2,000 to 3,000 mm.

UCDA 2019, § 2.1 to 2.5, p. 9-10; Coste 1955, p. 60; Yang et al. 2026, p. 7-8 (digest)

The Ugandan farming system is most often the coffee-banana association, at the rate of one banana plant for four coffee trees, each coffee tree being shaded by only one banana plant; coffee is planted at 10 feet by 10 (about 3 m × 3 m), banana at 20 by 20, and the manual puts at more than 50% the extra income per hectare compared with pure coffee, against increased competition for water, nitrogen and light if shade exceeds what is needed.

The intercrops of the first two years (dwarf bean, peanut, soybean, tomato, cabbage) stay confined to the central 2 meters of the interrow; maize, millet, rice, cassava and potato are banned as too greedy. Yang's review places useful shade in hot, low zones between 30 and 50%, and notes that beyond 60% flowering drops. Chapter 4 of the manual is devoted to the cutting back of old trees, in three modes, staggered, total or in thirds, because half of the Ugandan orchard dates from the plantings of the 1950s.

UCDA 2019, § 2.6, p. 10-13, tables 2-3, and ch. 4, p. 41-47; Yang et al. 2026, p. 11-12 (digest)