What secrets of chocolate are hidden in the genes of Ecuador’s cocoa crops?

In Ecuador, researchers are preserving the genetic heritage of cocoa (Theobroma cacao), the raw material of chocolate.

Cocoa (or cocoa) is derived from the fermented and dried seeds of the Theobroma cacao The tree is now cultivated in Africa, but its wild relatives and ancestral varieties abound in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. It is also one of the country’s main crops, with production growing at an average annual rate of 15% since 2014.

Cesar Guillermo Tapia Bastidas, director of the National Department of Plant Genetic Resources at Ecuador’s National Institute of Agricultural Research, explains that their germplasm bank consists of about 28,000 accessions that are conserved in the field, in vitro, through cryopreservation and cold storage.

“The cacao collection, which includes approximately 2,000 accessions conserved in the field at the Pichilingue Experimental Station, the South Littoral Experimental Station, and the Central Amazon Experimental Station, began in the 1950s as an inter-institutional initiative with colleagues from the United States, and has grown over time with the support of various donors and the Ecuadorian government,” he explains.

Ecuador’s small producers continue to face challenges in improving production and finding sustainable supply chains, but the gene bank is essential to preserving the country’s highly valued varieties.

“This collection is one of the largest in Latin America with very important materials such as fine and aromatic cocoa,” he said, adding that to preserve the cocoa collection, the national gene bank is enhancing all its conservation efforts with the support of the Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods and Development program, which supports more than a dozen national gene banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Tapia explains that the motivation behind creating the germplasm bank was that underutilized crops, such as cereals, tubers and roots from the high Andes, were being lost in the 1980s.

“The bank conserves native and exotic agrobiodiversity of cereals, tubers and roots from the high Andes, Amazonian and tropical fruit trees, forest species, medicinal plants and export crops such as cocoa, coffee, bananas, African palm, annatto, among others,” he says.

Tapia explains that the gene bank is a source of genes for breeding programs and for obtaining improved varieties with high productivity, resistance to pests and diseases and with important nutritional quality, while also contributing to returning these preserved varieties to farming communities, encouraging biodiversity, supporting agrotourism and developing value-added products.

“In a word, genetic resources for food and agriculture are what feed the world, but unfortunately there is still a lack of awareness and knowledge to use and conserve them,” he says. “I think the biggest challenge is to avoid the genetic erosion that these genetic resources are suffering and the next step in the near future will be to develop the Red Book of Indigenous Agrobiodiversity of Ecuador that will allow us to alert about the loss of this important diversity that has been domesticated by our people for more than 10,000 years.”

Growing up in Ecuador

Tapia is originally from the Pichincha province of Ecuador and grew up with a passion for nature and mountains.

“Working with this biodiversity made me understand where to go professionally and my love for the agrobiodiversity of my country began to grow, taking into account that I am in a mega-biodiverse country,” he says. “Almost immediately after getting involved in the lives of indigenous and agricultural communities and their biodiverse production systems, I began to observe a significant loss of native varieties of species important for food security.

Tapia explains that this was about 30 years ago, when crops like quinoa, amaranth, melloco, mashua and oca were still considered weeds instead of the superfoods they are today.

“I graduated as an agricultural engineer at the University, I did my thesis on small Andean tubers (melloco, oca, mashua) at INIAP where I continue to work until today,” he says. “Today we have a germplasm bank that is the largest in the country, conserving the agrobiodiversity of many important crops for food security, for export and with very important nutritional characteristics.”

Tapia explains that researchers from the Global South play a fundamental role in generating technologies that contribute to solving global problems.

“It is also important for researchers to participate in politics, mainly in the development of laws,” he says, adding that he has also participated in international negotiations on biodiversity policies as a representative of Ecuador.

“I do not believe that researchers should only focus on developing technologies, but should be active and critical participants in policies to protect our planet and its biodiversity,” Tapia says.

Brazil nuts in Colombia

In neighboring Colombia, Diana Medellín-Zabala studied the Brazil nut family (Lecythidaceae), notably helping to describe a new species.

The Brazil nut trade (Bertholletia excelsa) is worth $299 million, but there are many other species in the large family, which includes about 215 species in Central and South America.

Medellin-Zabala, a Colombian biologist and doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan in the United States, explains that it is important to understand why this particular group of plants is found in unique ecosystems such as the Amazon basin, the Guiana Shield in northern South America and the Choco biogeographic region of Colombia, along its Pacific coast.

“This group is one of the 20 most species-rich tree families in the Amazon rainforest, and the third in terms of biomass providing important ecological services such as carbon sequestration and food resources for pollinators and seed dispersers,” she says. “In addition to its center of diversification being in the Amazon basin, there are notable species present in other ecoregions such as the inter-Andean valleys, the Chocó biogeographic region and even the Andes (about 2,000 meters above sea level), which are regions with different geological history, climatic variables and biotic dynamics.”