IITA hosts W/African cocoa breeders meeting

The meeting was attended by participants from CRIN, Nigeria; CRIG, Ghana; IRAD, Cameroon; CNRA, Cote d¹Ivoire; and representatives of the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF).The meeting discussed the results of the fingerprinting component of the African Cocoa Initiative (ACI) project of WCF, which is true-to-type genotyping of cocoa germplasm from breeders’ collection and seed garden materials.Discussion […]

The meeting was attended by participants from CRIN, Nigeria; CRIG, Ghana; IRAD, Cameroon; CNRA, Cote d¹Ivoire; and representatives of the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF).
The meeting discussed the results of the fingerprinting component of the African Cocoa Initiative (ACI) project of WCF, which is true-to-type genotyping of cocoa germplasm from breeders’ collection and seed garden materials.
Discussion was held on the issue of identifying mislabeling in cocoa germplasm, which is one of the major concerns in identification of true-to-type clones and its effect on production in farmers’ fields. It was observed that majority of the clones in all the countries are mislabeled.
There were brainstorming sessions on how to address the issue of progenies that have been generated from non-true-to-type parental populations and have been distributed to farmers over the years, and its negative effects on cocoa production.
In addition, discussions were also held on testing the fidelity of crosses considering cocoa as an outcrossing species and the probability of some cross-contamination during manual pollination and its effect on cocoa production.
The meeting ended with a note on identification of few standard true-to-type cocoa clones across the region that could be used as a reference and maintained for future cocoa improvement programmes across all the countries.
This meeting was followed by a 3-day workshop on data handling, statistical analysis and data interpretations, with Trushar Shah, Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) Hub Manager, based in IITA-Kenya, as resource person.
The workshop involved data visualisation using Flapjack software and data analysis using R software.