A strategy to safeguard the future of chocolate

The vast global chocolate industry — worth more than US$100 billion a year   [2]— rests on shaky agricultural foundations. Millions of farmers have just a few trees each, and those trees are constantly under threat from a range of pests and diseases. Long-term, they need better trees.

Aiming to help meet that need, a Global Strategy for the Conservation and Use of Cacao Genetic Resources will be formally launched on Thursday 18 October at the 17th International Cocoa Research Conference   [3]in Yaoundée, Cameroon. Development of the strategy, which seeks a secure and sustainable foundation for cacao conservation, was funded in part by the CGIAR Research Program on Trees, Forests and Agroforestry. Three CGIAR centers, Bioversity International, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA  [4]) and the World AgroForesty Insititute (ICRAF  [5]), helped to develop the strategy.

“We consulted very widely with experts from all sectors,” said Brigitte Laliberté, the strategy’s compiler, “and we now have an informed and realistic foundation for prioritising cacao research.”

The strategy is built on four main planks:

• Developing tools to describe existing diversity, contribute to the taxonomy of cacao, and use these to identify and then fill gaps in existing collections.
• Building a global strategic collection, based on existing field genebanks in Costa Rica and Trinidad. These two collections are already covered by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, to ensure access and benefit-sharing. Safe movement of samples, to prevent the spread of pests and diseases, is entrusted to the International Cocoa Quarantine Centre at the University of Reading in the UK.
• Evaluation for use, looking especially at economically important characteristics such as resistance to pests and diseases, good quality beans, and precocity, so that farmers can start to harvest sooner from newly planted trees. Improved characterisation like this will support breeders and growers in their efforts to deploy better selections.
• Documentation and information, to ensure that the characterisation and evaluation data are widely available to interested parties around the world. This will require strengthening local information systems and supporting existing international databases.

Optimising the conservation and use of cacao diversity is a high priority for CacaoNet  [6], established in 2005 to bring together national and international players   [7]in public and private sectors. One remarkable feature of CacaoNet and the development of the strategy, according to Brigitte Laliberté, is the strong engagement of the private sector. “They have been very involved, more than any other crop I know of,” she said.

To a great extent this represents enlightened self-interest; the future of their industry depends on being able to maintain and improve production, and the conservation and use of cacao genetic diversity is a crucial element in that. Private-sector cooperation was also made possible because CacaoNet is coordinated by Bioversity International, a neutral research partner, rather than one of the big industry figures.

The widespread consultation that went into the strategy will ensure that cocoa producers and industry at this week’s meeting in Cameroon will now be able to make a start on implemention.

Note: More details of the strategy, and links to the full document and a summary, can be found on the CacaoNet website  [8].