As a leader in cocoa science, Mars, Incorporated has been researching cacao and working towards cocoa sustainability for decades http://www.mars.com/global/commitments/sustainability/cocoa-sustainability.aspx. The cacao genome program is the latest example of Mars commitment to advance the science of cocoa for the benefit of everyone along the supply chain, starting with farmers first.

The cacao genome program at Mars is led by Dr. Howard-Yana Shapiro and Dr. Juan Carlos Motamayor with John Didzbalis, Jean Philippe Marelli, Victor Nwosu and Ed Sequine, which  aims to modernize cacao, through traditional breeding methods, by making available the most modern genomic tools to cacao geneticists and breeders worldwide.

Mars has deemed the cacao genome information so critical to the sustainable future of the millions of small holder cacao farmers that the cacao sequence will be put into the public domain with free access to the cacao scientific community and anyone who can utilize it to improve cacao. With the support of MARS and USDA-ARS, scientists from many of the cocoa-growing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America have received training in the utilization of genomic tools and have already begun to benefit from this Mars initiative.