Chocolate Under Threat from Old and New Cacao Diseases
Phytopathology • 2019 • 109:1331-1343 • https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO-12-18-0477-RVW Chocolate Under Threat from Old and New Cacao Diseases Jean-Philippe Marelli,1,† David I. Guest,2,† Bryan A. Bailey,3 Harry C. Evans,4 Judith K. Brown,5 Muhammad Junaid,2,8 Robert W. Barreto,6 Daniela O. Lisboa,6 and Alina S. Puig7 1 Mars/USDA Cacao Laboratory, 13601 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158, U.S.A. 2 Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, the University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia 3 USDA-ARS/Sustainable Perennial Crops Lab, Beltsville, MD 20705, U.S.A. 4 CAB International, Egham, Surrey, U.K. 5 School of Plant Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A. 6 Universidade Federal de Vic¸osa, Vic¸osa, Minas Gerais, Brazil 7 USDA-ARS/Subtropical Horticultural Research Station, Miami, FL 33131, U.S.A. 8 Cocoa Research Group/Faculty of Agriculture, Hasanuddin University, 90245 Makassar, Indonesia Accepted for publication 20 May 2019. ABSTRACT Theobroma cacao, the source of chocolate, is affected by destructive diseases wherever it is grown. Some diseases are endemic; however, as cacao was disseminated from the Amazon rain forest to new cultivation sites it encountered new pathogens. Two well-established diseases cause the greatest losses: black pod rot, caused by several species of Phytophthora, and witches’ broom of cacao, caused by Moniliophthora perniciosa. Phytophthora megakarya causes the severest damage in the main cacao producing countries in West Africa, while P. palmivora causes significant losses globally. M. perniciosa is related to a sister basidiomycete species, M.
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