Author Topic: Cacao seeds  (Read 339 times)

Ado

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Cacao seeds
« on: May 11, 2023, 12:06:00 AM »
Does anyone know if it grows true to seed or are they grafted?

Finca La Isla

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Re: Cacao seeds
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2023, 09:26:45 AM »
In Costa Rica it is recommended that farmers plant grafted cacao trees.  But you can certainly get good trees by planting seedlings.
Peter

Daintree

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Re: Cacao seeds
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2023, 09:30:18 AM »
All my cacao are from seed. My son just purchased a farm in Belize and they planted all theirs from seed. We have a Swedish friend with a cacao farm in Fiji, and they not only plant all theirs from seed, they sow them directly in the field, skipping pots altogether.

So yes, they will grow true to seed. The caveat being that they are self-incompatible, so if you only have two trees, one forastero and one trinatario for example, the offspring will be a cross between the two.

Cheers,
Carolyn

ben mango

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Re: Cacao seeds
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2023, 01:06:23 PM »
I’ve heard from a cacao farmer in Hawaii that they prefer to grow from seed, that way when making chocolate they are making it from a variety of different fruits , which can help give the chocolate a more complex taste than if it was all grown from one variety/clone

Finca La Isla

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Re: Cacao seeds
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2023, 07:09:14 PM »
Of course you can grow cacao from seed. That doesn’t mean it comes true to seed. You will get a lot of variety planting out seeds. This can be good and bad. Many trees are likely to be poor producers.
Cacao has lots of disease problems. Grafted selections are mostly chosen on disease resistance and production quantity.
Not all cacao is self infertile. But you would never plant a single clone.
In Costa Rica there are 6 selections of trinitario that are being encouraged by the agriculture ministry. An interesting layout is to plant a row of each. That way you get good pollination from the adjacent rows. You could harvest from a single row per batch or mix and match to see what cacao you prefer for your chocolate.
Besides planting the government clones you might visit other established cacao farms, ask about which trees are best and offer something for some bud wood.
Cacao is a tough crop to make a living at. If I wasn’t making chocolate I wouldn’t spend my time on it. Chocolate is a good business but I can’t say the same for cacao.
Most growers average about 300kg per hectare. A worker working full time can take care of 3-4 hectares. Incidentally, the labor cost per acre is about the same for cacao and durian!  4hectares-10 acres.
Peter