Cocoa plant propagation techniques to supply farmers with improved planting materials

Abstract

The availability of high-performance planting materials to cocoa farmers is an important part of a package of measures to improve the productivity of cocoa farms and thus the sustainability of the cocoa economy. This chapter reviews the methods, advantages and challenges of techniques of mass propagation, with a focus on seed and conventional vegetative propagation (since tissue culture techniques are covered in a separate chapter). The chapter discusses cross-cutting issues to be taken into account when developing a strategy to supply farmers with planting materials. These include availability of source materials, requirements for human resources and facilities, phytosanitary considerations, costs and demand. Finally, the chapter looks ahead to potential future research trends in this area.

Locally-selected cacao clones for improved yield: a case study in different production systems in a long-term trial

“…Even though large collections maintain over 30,000 different genotypes only in Ecuador and Brazil (Bekele and Phillips-Mora, 2019), most breeding and selection programmes are based on less than 80 genotypes (Lopes et al, 2011;CacaoNet et al, 2012) and do not fully use the cacao diversity in the respective countries (Ceccarelli et al, 2022). It is estimated that more than 75% of cacao famers are currently using poor genetic material from unknown provenance, which is one of the major factors behind the low yields and high losses caused by fungal diseases (End et al, 2018). Improving the genetic material for agroforestry systems, where cacao yields are usually lower, is even more relevant.…”

“…Compared with local selections, the progenies of hybrid crosses produce higher yields, and present higher resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses (Lopes et al, 2011). However, more recently, in America and Southeast Asia, the recommendation has shifted towards the use of grafted clones, which are highly resistant to specific fungal diseases, and high-quality cacao beans (End et al, 2018). An example of this recent shift towards grafted clones is found in the Alto Beni region of Bolivia, where the production of cacao has been improved through a selection programme carried out by the Bolivian cacao farmers' cooperative El Ceibo.…”