Entry: Bill Guyton, World Cocoa Foundation

In 1986, a consortium of chocolate manufacturing companies and The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) established the Penn State Endowed Program to support improvements in cocoa production through research on Theobroma cacao, the chocolate tree. This program operates at PSU with revenues from an endowment, funded by World Cocoa Foundation member companies. Additional contributions are also made by PSU, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other sources.

Over the past decade alone, the program has supported eight Ph.D. graduates and nearly 30 undergraduates. Graduates have gone on to work in government, academics and the private sector. Additionally, the program has welcomed six visiting scientists from cocoa-producing countries over the last four years.

The goals of the Penn State Endowment Program are:

- To stabilize and regionally diversify cocoa production
- To promote increased cocoa production proportional to demand
- To improve economic status of cacao farmers and producing countries
- To protect rainforest habitat and associated species through promotion of sustainable and profitable cacao
production systems

This is accomplished through the identification of elite cacao germplasm, propagation systems and technology transfer to cocoa farmers. The program is under the excellent leadership of Dr. Mark Guiltinan. For more information on the program, please visit: http://guiltinanlab.cas.psu.edu/Research/Cocoa/cocoa.htm.


Penn State Endowment Program faculty and students

I have the opportunity to visit Penn State University each fall, for an annual review of the program. It is encouraging to learn about the accomplishments of the program and the collaborations the PSU team has formed with researchers in cocoa-producing countries. Some of these achievements include the development of vegetative propagation methods that can be used in combination to achieve a large and rapid multiplication of cacao plants from single elite trees including in vitro tissue culture. The PSU program is also helping to identify ways of reducing disease losses on cocoa farms, as highlighted in one of our past blogs by PSU doctoral graduate, Rachel Melnick.

The World Cocoa Foundation is pleased to support the PSU cocoa research endowment with our member companies and thank Dr. Mark Guiltinan, Siela Maximova, the faculty and students who have made the program a success.