In a development that could help protect one of the world’s most beloved agricultural commodities, a research team at Penn State has successfully created disease-resistant cacao plants using gene-editing technology. According to the researchers, the innovation promises to help resolve a significant problem for the global chocolate industry, worth more than $135 billion annually, which faces threat from the phytophthora species, a fungal-like pathogen that gives rise to the destructive black pod disease that can cause yield losses of up to 30% worldwide.
Gene editing, traditional crossbreeding produce disease-resistant cacao plants
