Identifying elite genotypes is essential to renew old cocao plantations in Latin America and other producing regions. However, highly performing plants can only be introduced if they can be made available in very large quantities. That is why the somatic embryogenesis technique, which enables plant derivation from a group of non-reproductive cells, is important.

The technique is widely used for coffee and other crops. In 2000, Nestlé set out to test it with cocoa through a project in Ecuador and Brazil. Its goal is to assess the agronomic performance and conformity of Theobroma cocoa trees produced via somatic embryogenesis, in comparison to other methods of cocoa tree propagation. The results over the period 2000-2004 were presented at the last International Cocoa Conference (Kuala Lumpur, July 2005), and were extremely promising.

These trees have the same architecture as seed-propagated trees and need approximately half the pruning work during the first three years compared to other vegetative propagation methods like grafting or cutting. The somatic embryo trees are more vigorous (larger trunk diameter), bear pods sooner (first harvest four months earlier), and show strong plant uniformity and higher bean yield from the third year after field planting (139 vs. 33 pods/20 trees) with similar bean weight.