26 June 2008 - According to the USDA/ARS, during the past 15 years, the global cocoa industry has been confronted with witches' broom, frosty pod and black pod - a trio of devastating fungal diseases that has cost growers an estimated USD 700 million per year.
“And while cocoa is not grown in the U.S., for every dollar of cocoa imported, between one and two dollars of domestic agricultural products are used in the manufacture of chocolate products”, US confectionery giant Mars, Inc. said in a statement.
Unlike corn, rice or wheat, cocoa has been the subject of little agricultural research, claims the company.
However, today, a new scientific partnership was announced between the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, Mars Inc., and IBM.
The three partners hope to have sequenced the entire cocoa genome in five years time.
The cocoa genome project, which will be financially supported and coordinated by Mars, will benefit from extra scientific support provided by the USDA’s Subtropical Horticulture Research Station (SHRS) in Miami, in collaboration with scientists at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
Thanks to its ‘Blue Gene’ supercomputer, IBM will help analyse the cocoa genome.
It is also understood that Washington State University will help in creating detailed genetic maps and assembling the sequence fragments into the complete genome sequence.
Ultimately, the project team will hope that by sequencing the cocoa genome, the chocolate industry will be able count on cocoa plants producing higher yields and witness significant results in terms of disease and pest resistance, drought tolerance, and perhaps flavour.
“The collaboration will enable farmers to plant better quality cocoa and, more importantly, help create healthier, stronger cocoa crops with higher yields, pest and disease resistance, and increased water and nutrient use efficiency. These crops will help protect an important social, economic and environmental driver in Africa, where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is produced”, Mars, Inc., said in the statement sent to FLEXNEWS.
Howard-Yana Shapiro, Ph.D., Mars’ global director of plant science, added: “As the global leader in cocoa science, Mars saw the potential this research holds to help accelerate what farmers have been doing since the beginning of time with traditional breeding, ultimately improving cocoa trees, yielding higher quality cocoa and increasing income for farmers”
In a statement, the USDA said that the SHRS is currently conducting field trials involving foreign partners in South America, West Africa, Central America and Papua New Guinea to evaluate potential disease-resistant cocoa trees. Several of these tree selections were based upon disease-tolerance genes discovered in the Miami laboratories.
Since 1999, the SHRS has worked in partnership with Mars Inc., to apply modern molecular genetic techniques to enhance cocoa breeding and reducing the threat of pest and disease to the crop around the world.
Once completed, the research results will be released into the public domain via the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA), which supports agricultural innovation for both humanitarian and small-scale commercial purposes.
“We are delighted to work with Mars, USDA and IBM to allow free access to the cocoa genome sequence information in real time, while ensuring that the gene sequences will not be patented,” noted Alan Bennett, Executive Director of the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture. “Once its genome is sequenced, it has the potential to provide positive social, economic and environmental impact for the more than 6.5 million small family cocoa farmers around the world.”