IR-4 is supporting efforts to turn Hawaii into a world-recognized center for high-quality chocolate research and education—and the best-tasting chocolate.
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Left: Cacao pods ready for harvest, which takes place every four weeks. Right: Cacao pods showing the beans inside.
Image credit: Colin Hart.
Cacao growers and chocolate makers in Hawaii are setting a bold vision for the state to become “The Napa Valley of Chocolate,” and IR-4 is helping to support that goal. Hawaii is uniquely positioned for success in this effort due to its range of growing regions in a compact area, its robust tourism industry, strong support from university research institutions, and its hyper-local food system.
Hawaiian cacao is made into award-winning chocolate by Hawaiian makers and distributed and sold in Hawaii. This tight feedback loop is extremely rare in the chocolate market and allows makers and growers to work together to make the highest quality product. Cacao has not historically been a commodity export crop in Hawaii—a striking contrast to other cacao-growing regions. This has kept Hawaiian cacao locally focused, where collaboration and feedback have continually enriched the quality of the chocolate, from bean to bar.
The Hawaiian chocolate industry, led by the Hawaii Chocolate and Cacao Association (HCCA), sees the opportunity for the state to become a world-recognized center for high-quality chocolate, as well as excellence in education and research on the best-growing practices and varieties for cacao. A recent legislative grant of $6.9 million to transform the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources’ Waikea Research Station into a center of excellence for tropical tree crops, including Hawaiian cacao, supports this goal.
At a May 2024 conference including more than 150 chocolate makers, cacao farmers and other professionals, HCCA President Will Lydgate of Lydgate Farms on Kauai, said, “Hawaii produces less than .0001% of the world’s cacao, but won more than 10% of the world’s Gold Awards at the international Cacao of Excellence awards. While we can never compete on volume, we can be synonymous with quality. We think it’s plausible that Hawaii can be known as the place to come for the best cacao, the place for cacao and chocolate-based university degrees and training, and the place where visitors from around the world come to enjoy ‘Chocolate Country.’”
How IR-4’s Research Supports Hawaiian Chocolate
IR-4 works directly with growers, registrants of crop protection products, and other members of the specialty crop community to develop data required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the registration of pest management tools for specialty crops, which are often not included in the initial registration of crop protection products because of the relatively small number of growers and acreage. The acreage of cacao production in the U.S. is relatively small — just 179 acres in Hawaii and less than 100 acres in Puerto Rico. However, cacao growers still need these products—with limited acreage and a high-value crop, protecting cacao from pests is vital to growers’ success and the burgeoning Hawaiian cacao industry.
Chocolate is made from Theobroma cacao—a tropical tree that produces a 6-12”-long pod that contains seeds, known as beans, along with a white pulp. The beans are removed and fermented, dried, roasted, winnowed and ground into a paste (cocoa liquor) to which cocoa butter and cane sugar are added before the mixture is molded into its final form. There are countless variations and nuances that make every chocolate artisan’s product unique. Besides chocolate, cocoa powder and cocoa butter are made from cacao and used in countless products. While the cacao tree is valuable and versatile, it is also vulnerable to pests—that’s where IR-4 comes in.
Julie Coughlin, researcher for the Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and field research director for IR-4, says the main disease problem on cacao in Hawaii is Phytophthora palmivora (black pod rot, pictured right), while the main insect problem is the Chinese rose beetle (Adoretus sinicus). Coughlin is working with Syngenta, makers of Orondis® Ultra (active ingredients mandipropamid and oxathiapiprolin) to register this fungicide for use on cacao in the U.S. to control black pod rot.
Product manufacturers such as Syngenta rely on IR-4 to provide efficacy and crop safety data for a particular pest on a particular crop, so they know if a product works and whether it will damage the plants. IR-4 also collects data on pesticide residue that the EPA evaluates to ensure those residues do not exceed the level considered safe for consumption. Sometimes this includes “processed fractions,” which for cacao means the residues are checked in dried bean, roasted bean, chocolate and cocoa powder.
“Syngenta has let us know in this case, they don’t need the processed fractions, because they already have enough data from other growing areas,” Coughlin says. “That’s great because it saves time. We only need to generate dried bean samples for analysis. I’m setting up a field trial to collect efficacy and crop safety data and general residue data with a local grower on the Big Island (Hawai’i). Residue trials will be conducted at grower locations on Hawai’i and Oahu. In addition, Dr. Lisa Keith of USDA-PBARC (United States Department of Agriculture-Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center) will do an in vitro assay. They’ll take the pathogen present in the field into the lab and test the efficacy of Orondis Ultra and a phosphorus acid product that is currently the grower standard. It’s helpful to learn how the products perform in the lab before field testing. Working with USDA is a great collaboration between the university and the government.”
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Left: Colin Hart is passionate about making Hawaii known for its high-quality chocolate. Right: Honoli’i Farms chocolate field. Image credit: Colin Hart.
IR-4 Supports Growers; Growers Support the Research
Colin Hart, the grower with whom Coughlin is partnering on the field trial, is an ardent supporter of IR-4’s research.
“Black pod rot can take from 20% to nearly 50% of our yield each year, depending on the environmental conditions,” Hart says. “We don’t have a good set of standards on how to deal with it here, so doing this kind of research is really important. It’s not something that would have just happened without IR-4’s involvement because of the resources necessary and the fact that cacao production is pretty small in the U.S.”
Hart owns Honoli‘i Orchards, a 33-acre, multi-generational family farm located on the windward slopes of Maunakea, Hawai‘i Island’s tallest volcano. The farm’s primary crop is cacao, although Hart also grows coffee (Coffea arabica) and kava (Piper methysticum), as well as many species of tropical hardwoods and native Hawaiian plants.
Cacao pods are harvested every four weeks, and the beans are removed and fermented. Because of the farm’s location, it experiences high rainfall and is very wet — great for growing cacao trees. After fermentation, the beans are transported to the other side of the island, which is one of the driest places in the state. Uniform drying conditions are essential for a stable, consistent product, Hart says. The fermented, dried beans are shipped to Oahu to be made into chocolate by Mānoa Chocolate, a company that sources beans from Hawai’i and around the world.
Hart is growing about 30 different varieties of cacao trees on his farm. Some are high-performing commercial varieties from Central and South America, and some are local. Many of these varieties are grown in randomized blocks and are being used in IR-4’s Orondis® Ultra fungicide efficacy trial. While the goal of the trial is not to determine varietal tolerance to Phytophthora, Hart says it will make the data more valuable.
“Just by observing and collecting anecdotal data, there are definitely cacao varieties that seem much more tolerant to Phytophthora, so it would be great to get funding to continue the research — especially in plots like this that are already set up to host experiments,” Hart says.
While the wet growing conditions are ideal for the cacao trees, they are also ideal for black pod rot. “It’s a deadly combination because while the trees are loaded with fruit, they are also pretty loaded with the disease,” Hart says. “We are doing cleaning and management practices ourselves, but it would be great to have more research-driven protocols.”
No Rest for the Weary: Anticipating New Pests is Part of the Job
Coughlin is also working on obtaining pesticide registrations to control the Chinese rose beetle, a voracious pest that can reduce leaves to lace overnight. They especially damage young cacao trees, which have few leaves and can’t survive the loss. Currently, growers place cages over the young trees, but as soon as the cages are removed as the plants grow larger, the pests attack.
“I have three pesticide [Project] Clearance Requests for products to control Chinese rose beetle on the books right now, and they are under review with the registrants,” Coughlin says. “So that’s next. Once the registrants give approval, we can start field trials.”
Coughlin says it’s also important to anticipate what pests and diseases may emerge in the future. Pathogens and insects may arrive via transport or infected plants despite rigorous inspection efforts, or they may already exist on the island and become more of a problem due to climate change. Areas that traditionally receive rainfall intermittently might see it more often, increasing disease pressure.
Coughlin cites the example of coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), a long-time destructive disease in other parts of the world where coffee is grown and newly arrived in Hawaii, as an example of IR-4’s response. “We were already working on getting approvals for a product for coffee leaf rust before it even appeared in Hawaii,” Coughlin said. “We knew if it did arrive, it could be devastating. By the time it was detected, it was nearly through the registration process, and probably would have been completed already if it wasn’t for Covid delays. Although this product has not yet completed registration, we quickly shifted to another product that had a more direct path to registration.”
Cacao, like coffee, is an “orphan crop” in the United States, which means they don’t belong to any other crop groups. For example, nectarines are in the peach crop subgroup, so data can be extrapolated from peach to nectarine (and other crops in the subgroup) to make product registrations more efficient. For orphan crops, each active ingredient registered on these crops needs to be individually tested on those crops.
Potential disease threats to cacao in Hawaii include frosty pod (Moniliophthora roreri) and witches’ broom (Moniliophthora perniciosa). “These are horrible diseases we don’t have yet, but they can wipe out cacao,” Coughlin says. “Just like with the coffee leaf rust, we are looking at the classes of pesticides that control them and will probably shift to that in the future. We do have an advantage in that we share many tropical crops with Latin America, and because cacao and coffee are large crops in those areas, there are already pesticides registered for many of their problems. We work with the manufacturers, and if we’re fortunate, the residue data they already have from other countries can be used to support our uses in Hawaii.”
IR-4’s relationship with pesticide manufacturers is especially important when obtaining new registrations for orphan crops. “They are assuming a risk, and they aren’t going to sell a lot of product to make up for it,” Coughlin says. There’s not a lot of incentive on their end, but these products are vital for the growers who need them. We have long-term, good relationships with the folks at these companies, and these things would not happen without their support.”
Coughlin, who is retiring at the end of 2024, loves her work and is enthusiastic about supporting cacao growers. “I love their vision — the whole group is made up of really great people who want to put Hawaii on the map for something unique while supporting their families and the local economy. I think I’m always going to continue to support the cacao growers in some way.”
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Left: Once beans are extracted from the pods, they are fermented for up to 10 days, depending on the variety. Right: Honoli’i Farms transports its beans to the west side of Hawai’i Island to take advantage of its consistently arid climate, which is important for drying the beans. Image credit: Colin Hart.
A Culture of Collaboration Around Cacao
A rising tide raises all boats, and this is the philosophy driving the united effort to promote Hawaiian chocolate as a high-end, luxury product. It’s not just the marketing. Growers are working together to share processing techniques, growing practices, successes with varieties and business ideas.
“It’s important to keep and maintain the quality,” says Colin Hart, owner of Honoli‘i Orchards on Hawai’i Island. “If we don’t share what we’ve learned from our mistakes, we will have more people making those mistakes and more poor-quality product getting out there. The more we collaborate and share, the more successful everyone will be. That’s the mentality of everyone that’s involved with cacao in Hawaii right now.”
Hart’s goal for the industry is to reach a place where it’s commercially viable enough to receive funding to establish set protocols. If a new grower wants to start up, there is a playbook of how to do it, he says. “I’d like to see ‘here’s the varieties you should grow if you’re on this side of the island,’ or ‘here are the management practices if you’re in this area.’”
His vision doesn’t stop there. “In the 1960s and 1970s, in its sugar cane days, Hawaii was known for its agriculture. Some of the best tropical research in the world was happening in Hawaii,” Hart says. “I would like us to be known for that again. And I think having these fascinating new value-added crops is something that helps to promote that kind of research and excitement.”
Ecotourism Provides Opportunities
Until that time, however, the margins are razor thin for cacao growers in Hawaii. Many are turning to eco-tourism to boost farm profits. Tourism can be a powerful tool for promoting awareness of Hawaiian chocolate and its quality. Farm tours take time away from actual farming, but Hart says the money he makes goes back into the farm, so they are worth doing. Safety concerns, restrooms, and building spaces to eat and shop are challenges to be considered for growers interested in eco-tourism.
Hart says it’s important to have an educational angle to the tours. “When people see where the product is from, the people working there and being involved in all the steps are willing to spend a little bit more money on it. People, in general, are more interested in where their food comes from. If we want to associate Hawaiian chocolate with quality, we want people to have good experiences and learn about what we do.”
IR-4 is proud to support growers of specialty crops like cacao; when specialty crop producers have the tools they need to cultivate thriving livelihoods and high-quality food products, everyone benefits. Learn more about touring Honoli’i Farm here.
Join a farm tour to learn where chocolate comes from, and how local artisans shape it from bean to bar. Image credit: Julie Coughlin
About The IR-4 Project
The mission of the IR-4 Project is to facilitate regulatory approval of sustainable pest management technologies for specialty crops and specialty uses to promote public well-being. Working directly with stakeholders across the country, IR-4 conducts research and develops data necessary for the registration of safe, effective pest management tools to meet the needs of growers.
Robin Siktberg is a writer working with IR-4 through Meister Media.