AUTHOR=Lavoie Andréanne , Thomas Evert , Olivier Alain 

TITLE=Local working collections as the foundation for an integrated conservation of Theobroma cacao L. in Latin America

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2022.1063266

DOI=10.3389/fevo.2022.1063266

ISSN=2296-701X

ABSTRACT=The intraspecific diversity of cacao has traditionally been preserved in field genebanks. However, these establishments face various challenges, notably insufficient funding, accession redundancy, misidentification and lack of wild cacao populations and relatives’ samples. In natural environments, it is expected that unknown varieties of cacao may still be found, but wild populations of cacao are increasingly threatened by climate change, deforestation, habitat loss, land use changes and poor knowledge. Farmers also retain diversity, but on-farm conservation is affected by geopolitical, economic, management and cultural issues, that are influenced at many scales, form the household to the international market. Taking separately, ex situ, in situ and on-farm conservation did not achieve sufficient conservation that allowed the inclusion of all stakeholders and the use of cacao diversity broadly. We analyze the use of the traditional strategies in conservation (ex situ, in situ and on-farm) and propose an integrative approach based on local working collections to secure cacao diversity in the long term. We argue that national conservation networks should be implemented in countries of origin to simultaneously maximize alpha (diversity held in any given working collection), beta (the change in diversity between working collections in different regions) and gamma diversity (overall diversity in a country).