Barcoding For Chocolate (BFC)
Cacao is one of the most profitable crops for farmers in developing countries in the tropics. Yet despite its widespread cultivation the relationship between cacao and the crucial insects that carry the pollen from flower to flower, enabling the trees to produce the precious cocoa beans, remains shrouded in mystery. A major issue with cacao production is that only a minute fraction of all flowers gets pollinated and develop into healthy pods that carry cacao beans.
Researchers have looked into management strategies that could promote pollination but this turns out to be problematic. Due to the extremely large number of cacao flowers, their high turnover, short viability and small size, manual pollination of cacao flowers is complicated and very time consuming. Instead, the vast majority of cacao worldwide is still pollinated naturally by insects. But not just any insect will do. Cacao seems to be pollinated by tiny flies barely discernible with the naked eye. Even for experts with powerful microscopes, it is often impossible to identify the flies that are hanging around in cacao plantations and we do not know which of these are even remotely interested in cacao flowers.
As a result, if we want to increase the number of cacao pollinators to increase the production more cacao beans we have to identify exactly which of these flies are useful and which are not. This will be attempted using genetic fingerprinting. This procedure which is also known as barcoding allows to identify so called cryptic species that are impossible to distinguish morphologically by sequencing one or a few of their genes. For instance, by comparing the genetic code we can tell exactly which fly species are indeed found pollinating cacao flowers and which do not. More importantly we can also trace back where they reproduce.
In the past we have collected flies that emerge from different breeding habitats in cacao farms that include soil, rotting banana plants, bromeliads or empty cacao pods. In addition we collected hundreds of tiny flies that were caught from the inside of cacao flowers. Using barcoding we will not only be able to know exactly which species are useful pollinators but also where they reproduce. As such we can develop management strategies that could increase the breeding habitat of these pollinators in cacao plantations.
This project is funded by the VUB Global Minds Programme 2018
Cacao Pollination (CACPOL) 