Participants at the APCC COCOTECH Meeting are invited to debate each of the six topics that have been identified on the basis that throughout the present century, the coconut has been grown by methods developed in the previous century (or earlier). The inten­ tion is to develop a spontaneous, "think-tank", problem-solving ap­ proach to make sure the coconut community enters the next cen­ tury with something more than a mere subsistence crop.