22-24 October 2014, Trinidad

At the heart of the 2012 Global Cacao Strategy is the development of a Global Strategic Cacao Collection (GSCC), a virtual collection consisting of materials that have been identified as unique and interesting and that is currently available to all in the public domain.  The materials in the CATIE and CRC collections will form the backbone of this GSCC complemented with priority accessions from national collections available in the public domain. The 2012 Global Cacao Strategy recommended several actions to be taken, to be coordinated by CacaoNet in consultation with all its members. Therefore Bioversity International, on behalf of CacaoNet organized a first consultation on the development of the GSCC, jointly with the Cocoa Research Centre of the University of the West Indies (CRC/UWI) in Trinidad, 22-24 October 2014. The GOAL of the CacaoNet workshop was to contribute to the sustainability of cocoa production through the implementation of the Global Strategic Cacao Collection (GSCC) as a means to secure the long-term conservation of cacao genetic diversity and optimise its utilisation.