Cocoa: the ancestral fruit from which delicious chocolate is born

• World Cocoa Day is celebrated on July 7, due to the contribution of this crop to the economic, social and cultural development of many countries around the world.

July 7, 2022. Cocoa is an ancestral crop of great economic importance to the world, generating between 8 and 10 billion dollars a year; it also represents the livelihood for more than 40 million people. Most cocoa is produced in Africa, which accounts for 70% of the world's production. However, cocoa production also has a strong presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the case of Costa Rica, there are approximately 1,500 active cocoa farms, representing between 3,200 and 3,300 hectares, most of them in the Huetar Caribe region (40%), followed by 23% in Huetar Norte, 19% in the Brunca region, 17% in the Central Pacific and 1% in the North Pacific.

Due to its relevance, the world commemorates World Cocoa Day this July 7, and from CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) we join this celebration recognizing and thanking all the people involved in the cocoa value chain, who with their efforts maintain the sustainability of the sector and allow humanity to continue enjoying chocolate, a food high in antioxidants and with outstanding health benefits.

Also joining this effort are institutions such as CATIE, with more than 75 years of preserving the International Cocoa Collection, which is considered to be the future of chocolate due to the great variety of cocoa plants it houses, from different parts of the world and with varied characteristics.

The material in the collection has been the basis for CATIE, through research and genetic improvement, to produce cocoa clones known for their high productivity, excellent quality, resistance to diseases such as monilia and resilience to adverse climatic conditions, which have been distributed to producing families throughout Central America and several Latin American countries.

The collection includes materials from more than 20 countries, among them: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, French Guiana, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Ghana, Cameroon and many

During the next few years, CATIE will continue to make efforts to conserve the collection, which is in the public domain, and from it generate new genotypes that combine the characteristics of the current clones with other different ones, to produce varieties that increasingly surpass the characteristics of the previous ones. Currently, more than 200 combinations of different types of cocoa are being evaluated in more than 12 hectares of experiments, which will provide a new group of clones for producing families in the coming years, as well as further position the region in international markets.

Celebration with learning

To celebrate National Cocoa Day (in Costa Rica), CATIE's cocoa breeding team shared with producers in the Turrialba area, in a meeting organized by the National Learning Institute (INA) and the family business Nortico. Later, to celebrate World Cocoa Day, the team participated in a field day with producers and academics from different areas of the country in a field day organized by the National Institute for Innovation and Transfer of Agricultural Technology (INTA). In these spaces, CATIE presented its experience, the work carried out and trained more than 30 people in genetics, good agronomic practices and post-harvest cocoa management.