Introduction
Investigating Cacao Trees and Tiny Pollinators to Protect the Future of Chocolate
Imagine enjoying a piece of chocolate: it melts on your tongue. A firework of serotonin goes off in your brain – provided you like this sweet treat. With a growing number of chocolate lovers worldwide, the global chocolate market size was estimated at $ 119.39 billion in 2023, with an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.1 % from 2024 to 2030.1
Cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate, is derived from the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao. The tree produces tiny flowers and only a few of these are successfully pollinated, probably by small insects. With insect pollinator populations in sharp decline globally due to an overdependence on pesticides, habitat loss, and the climate crisis, new strategies to increase and improve the pollination success of cacao trees are critical. Katherine Wolcott, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biology at the University of Miami, is actively researching this topic.