Swollen shoot virus addressed at cacao genome workshop

The International Conference on the Status of Plant and Animal Genome Research has been held annually at the Town and Country Hotel in San Diego since 1993 and has included a cacao genome session since 2009. The Jan. 13 cacao genome session at this year’s Jan. 12-16 PAG conference included a presentation by Judith Brown of the University of Arizona’s School of Plant Sciences called “Genomic Characterization of the Cacao Swollen Shoot Badnavirus Species Complex in West Africa.”

“It’s known very little about the nature of the pathogen,” Brown said.

The taxonomic name for cacao is Theobroma cacao...