History

The French Institute of Coffee and Cocoa (IFCC) was established in French Guiana in 1978 in order to set up a "living collection" aimed at safeguarding the plant material created, selected or acquired by its researchers. From 1987 onwards, a second area of growing interest was the identification of the originality of local spontaneous cocoa trees, which were surveyed in the south-east of the country.
The first collection plot was planted in 1980: it was plant material formerly cultivated in the north of the country. Then, from 1987 onwards, three surveys in the south-east of the country provided abundant spontaneous plant material that was planted from 1988 to 1996. At the same time, material was imported from abroad. The current surface of the collection is 1.41 hectares (about 1600 trees).

Description of the collection

For the species T. cacao, the collection contains "local" material (in the form of free progenies and clones) and foreign material (mainly clones).

• The local material includes spontaneous and formerly cultivated material.  The whole represents 217 clones (192 of which are volunteer) and 56 free descendants (33 of which are wild). A "core collection" contains 192 volunteer clones and 9 formerly cultivated clones.
• Material of foreign origin represents 134 clones (and one free progeny).
• All genetic groups (as defined by Motamayor et al. 2008) are represented.

Themes of activity

The collection is a gene bank and a working collection; activities are characterization, evaluation, conservation and exchange of plant material (not including collection in primary forest).

• Characterization and evaluation

The collected wild material is in principle evaluated agronomically (individually) for 10 years, for several selection criteria. Then, the ortets are characterized (morphological descriptors: flowers, fruits) and "genotyped" with molecular markers. They are evaluated for resistance to several cocoa diseases, including brown rot, caused in Guyana by Phytophthora palmivora and P. capsici.

• Safeguarding

After characterization and agronomic evaluation of the wild material, the selected ortets are cloned and saved locally in a "core collection" and, for some of them, supplied to quarantines (mainly the one of the University of Reading, Great Britain).

• Exchanges

The collection is a living collection, importing and supplying clones through quarantine stations. The best selected and cloned ortets can be exported to the producing countries, via the quarantine stations of Reading or Montpellier (after sometimes an additional evaluation in the latter place). The collection also supplies other productions (pods, seeds, and possibly flowers and leaves), mainly for CIRAD in Montpellier. At the same time, it imports any clone useful for genetic improvement.
 * IRCC: Institut de recherches du café, du cacao et autres plantes stimulantes (it is one of the former member institutes of Gerdat, the ancestor of CIRAD).