Cacao threat atlas

The main diseases and pests of cacao are regional. Witches' broom and frosty pod rot are American, swollen shoot is West African, pod borer and vascular-streak dieback are Asian. This page records where each has been reported, when it arrived, and what is known about stopping it.

23 dated records8 threatsNo map, by decision

Why there is no map

A map claims to show where something is now. What exists is a set of dated first records and a plant-protection database whose country tables each carry their own date, one of them from 2019. Two official sources disagree about particular countries. So this page gives the records themselves, each with its source, and quotes each distribution with the date it was last updated.

“Present” means reported and accepted. Absence from a list means no accepted record. It is not a declaration that a country is free of anything.

Dated records, 1817 to 2021

In order of date. A first record is when something was reported, which may be long after it arrived.

Dated records of cacao pests and diseases, in order of date
When	Threat	Where	What was recorded	Source
1817	Frosty pod rot	Colombia, Norte de Santander	Earliest outbreak on record, as dated by the plant-protection database from a 2017 source.	EPPO
1860s	Cocoa pod borer	Sulawesi, Indonesia	Earliest date given for the pest on cocoa.	CacaoNet
1895	Witches' broom	Suriname	First report of the disease.	CacaoNet; EPPO
1906	Witches' broom	Guyana	First record.	EPPO
1921	Witches' broom	Ecuador	First record.	EPPO
1928	Witches' broom	Trinidad	First record. Tobago followed in 1939 and Grenada in 1948.	EPPO
1936	Swollen shoot	Ghana, Eastern region	First record of the disease. One paper dates it to 1922.	EPPO; Cilas et al. 2005
1936	Cocoa pod borer	Philippines	Date given for its arrival.	CacaoNet
1944	Swollen shoot	Nigeria	Reported. The virus there has since been found to be a species of its own.	Chingandu et al. 2019
1955	Swollen shoot	Togo, Kloto	Date given for the disease in Togo. It reached the main cocoa area, Litimé, at the end of the 1990s.	Cilas et al. 2005
1956	Frosty pod rot	Panama	First appearance outside north-western South America.	CacaoNet
1960s	Vascular-streak dieback	Papua New Guinea	The fungus was identified as the cause.	Guest and Keane 2007
1978	Witches' broom	Panama	First record.	EPPO
1980	Cocoa pod borer	Malaysia	Date given for its arrival.	CacaoNet
1985	Black pod (Phytophthora megakarya)	Ghana, Akomadan and Bechem	The aggressive species recorded at two places. By 2012 it was in 50 more districts.	Akrofi et al. 2015
1989	Witches' broom	Brazil, Bahia	First record in Brazil's main cocoa region. Eradication was attempted that year and failed; DNA evidence points to two separate introductions.	EPPO; Pereira et al. 1996; Anderbrhan et al. 1999
2003	Swollen shoot	Côte d'Ivoire	New outbreaks, after the disease had seemed eradicated there since the end of the 1950s.	EPPO
2006	Cocoa pod borer	Papua New Guinea, East New Britain	First appearance in Papua New Guinea.	CacaoNet; Yen et al. 2010
2011	Cocoa pod borer	Australia, Queensland	Found in one plantation of 2,400 trees. Eradication was declared on 14 January 2014.	EPPO; International Plant Protection Convention
2012	Frosty pod rot	Bolivia, Alto Beni	First record.	EPPO
2016	Frosty pod rot	Jamaica, Clarendon	First record in the Caribbean, reported by Jamaica to the international plant protection body on 29 September 2016. By December 2017 only two parishes had no detection.	EPPO; International Plant Protection Convention
2019	Witches' broom	Angola, Serra Vamba	The fungus identified on unidentified branches, not on cacao. The only record from the Eastern Hemisphere.	CacaoNet
2021	Frosty pod rot	Brazil, Acre	First report in Brazil, in an urban area, according to the germplasm guidelines. The plant-protection database's table did not list Brazil when read.	CacaoNet; EPPO

Official documents are listed in full under Sources at the foot of the page. The plant-protection database is that of the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization; the germplasm guidelines are CacaoNet’s, published in 2024.

Where the sources disagree

Left as disagreements. None is resolved here.

When swollen shoot was first seen in Ghana: 1936 according to the plant-protection database and Ghanaian authors; 1922 according to one disease note. (EPPO; Cilas et al. 2005; Ofori et al. 2022)
How many virus species cause swollen shoot: Ten in one sequencing study; at least eight in the germplasm guidelines; at least five in Ghana in another study. (CacaoNet; Muller et al. 2018; Abrokwah et al. 2016)
Where frosty pod rot originated: Colombia, proposed by two genetic studies; unknown, according to a third, which reads the diversity hotspots as early centres of farming and not of origin. (Phillips-Mora et al. 2007; Ali et al. 2015; Díaz-Valderrama et al. 2022)
Whether frosty pod rot is in Brazil: Reported in Acre in 2021 by the germplasm guidelines; absent from the plant-protection database's table, last updated in 2019. (CacaoNet; EPPO)
The range of cocoa pod borer: The germplasm guidelines list Taiwan and Sri Lanka; the database marks Taiwan invalid, does not list Sri Lanka, and marks China, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu unreliable. (CacaoNet; EPPO)
Whether removing diseased tissue pays: Weekly pod removal raised yield in Peru; in Cameroon it lowered disease without significantly raising production; in Bahia removing brooms went with consistently low pod production. (Soberanis et al. 1999; Ndoumbe-Nkeng et al. 2004; Medeiros et al. 2010)

Black pod

A pod rot caused by water moulds of the genus Phytophthora. Found wherever cocoa grows; how bad it is depends on which species is present.

Cause: several species. Phytophthora palmivora is present in most cocoa-producing countries; the more aggressive P. megakarya is listed from Bioko, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe and Togo. A further species was named in 2021 after it proved the commoner one in a sample from Bahia. (Decloquement et al. 2021; source 1)
Spread: in Ghana P. megakarya went from two places in 1985 to 50 more districts by 2012, and was isolated from the roots of other farm plants, cocoyam, plantain, oil palm and mango among them. (Akrofi et al. 2015)
Loss, measured: in untreated plots in Cameroon black pod took 71% of pods in one year and 34% the next; it rose with rainfall a week earlier. (Deberdt et al. 2008)
Management: fungicide held losses under 2% in the same trial, and a biocontrol fungus came between fungicide and nothing. Removing diseased pods lowered the disease rate in Cameroon without significantly raising production; in Ghana sanitation combined with fungicide on the trunk reduced disease in the canopy. (Deberdt et al. 2008; Ndoumbe-Nkeng et al. 2004; Opoku et al. 2007)
Climate: the aggressive species tolerates less heat, with an upper limit for growth of 30°C against 34°C for P. palmivora. (Puig et al. 2018)

Not shown: A current country list for P. megakarya from a plant-protection database. The database had no distribution page for it.

Not shown: A regional or global figure for losses. The 71% is untreated plots at one site in one wet year.

Not shown: That warming will hold the aggressive species back. The temperature limits are from laboratory cultures.

Witches' broom

A fungal disease, Moniliophthora perniciosa, that deforms shoots into brooms and rots pods. Native to the Amazon basin.

Distribution, as the plant-protection database had it on 25 July 2024: South America, Central America and the Caribbean, with Brazil marked as restricted to 13 states, and one African country, Angola. (source 2)
The Angolan record is not of the disease on cocoa. The fungus was identified in 2019 on unidentified branches. (source 1)
Spread: first reported in Suriname in 1895, it reached Bahia, Brazil's main cocoa region and outside its native range, in 1989. An eradication attempt that year failed, and DNA fingerprints indicate two independent introductions. (Pereira et al. 1996; Anderbrhan et al. 1999; source 1; source 3)
Resistance: the most widely used source, the clone Scavina 6, was overcome within a few years of being planted. Wild trees from other Amazonian river basins offer different sources. (de Albuquerque et al. 2010)
Management: in Bahia, alternating copper fungicide with a biocontrol fungus gave better pod yields than untreated plots, and removing brooms reduced losses while total pod production stayed low. (Medeiros et al. 2010)
Climate: infection rose after the drought of 2015 to 2016 in Bahia. (Gateau-Rey et al. 2018)

Not shown: How much production Bahia lost after 1989. No figure was in anything read.

Not shown: That the new sources of resistance will last. The same paper records how the previous one failed.

Frosty pod rot

A pod disease caused by Moniliophthora roreri, a relative of the witches' broom fungus. Confined to the Americas.

Distribution, as the plant-protection database had it on 11 October 2019: thirteen countries, all in the Americas, from Mexico to Bolivia, with Jamaica the only Caribbean island. The germplasm guidelines of 2024 count fourteen. (source 4; source 1)
Spread: confined to north-western South America until the 1950s; Panama in 1956; Bolivia in 2012; Jamaica in 2016; and, according to the guidelines, Brazil in 2021. (source 1; source 5; source 6)
It spreads as clones. No sexual reproduction was detected among 172 isolates, and current invasions trace to two genotypes. (Ali et al. 2015; Díaz-Valderrama et al. 2022)
Quarantine: it is on Brazil's list of absent quarantine pests and is a quarantine pest in Mexico and China. It has not been recorded in Africa or Asia. (source 7; source 4)
Management: copper gave the most consistent and still incomplete protection in Costa Rica; a biocontrol fungus in oil raised healthy pods from about 10% to about 31%; and removing diseased pods weekly cut the disease by 26 to 41% in Peru. (Bateman et al. 2005; Crozier et al. 2015; Soberanis et al. 1999)
Climate: symptoms followed wet weather before infection and peaked at a daily maximum of 30°C. (Leandro-Muñoz et al. 2017)

Not shown: A loss figure. With the best treatment in one trial, over two-thirds of pods were still lost; that is one susceptible planting.

Not shown: Brazil's present status from Brazil's own authority, whose documents could not be opened.

Cacao swollen shoot virus disease

A virus disease of West Africa that kills trees over a few years. Spread by mealybugs, and controlled chiefly by cutting infected trees out.

Cause: not one virus but a complex of related badnaviruses, at least eight to ten species depending on the count. The one in Nigeria is found nowhere else, and in a survey of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana a single species was the most widespread. (Muller et al. 2018; Chingandu et al. 2019; Ameyaw et al. 2024; source 8; source 1)
Transmission: by at least 14 species of mealybug, and not through seed. Nine mealybug species were found on cocoa in affected parts of Côte d'Ivoire, one of them making up 63% of colonies. (N'Guessan et al. 2019; source 1)
Distribution, as the plant-protection database had it on 10 October 2024: widespread in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo and Sri Lanka, and restricted in Sumatra. (source 9)
Detection is the hard part. Infection may be latent for up to 20 months and no test detects every strain; primer sets in one survey detected between 0.15 and 67% of symptomatic samples. (Ameyaw et al. 2024; source 1)
Loss: trees without symptoms out-yielded symptomatic trees of the same clones by about a fifth. That is the loss in living trees, before any die or are cut out. (Ofori et al. 2022)
Cutting out and replanting: of 41 replanted farms surveyed in Ghana, 38 stood beside old cocoa, and in 20 of those the neighbouring cocoa was infected. (Dzahini-Obiatey et al. 2006)
Barriers: a belt of citrus or oil palm almost stopped the virus entering new cocoa in a station trial, with 1 and 5 infected trees of 522 against 134 behind a cocoa barrier. (Domfeh et al. 2016)
Mild-strain protection worked for a time and then declined, and breeding for resistance since 1936 is described by Ghanaian breeders as having had little success. (Ameyaw et al. 2016; Ofori et al. 2022)
Shade: symptoms were least severe at about 54% shade on Ghanaian farms and yield highest at about 39%. (Andres et al. 2018)

Not shown: How many trees have been cut out, or what the campaigns achieved overall. No figure was in anything read.

Not shown: That barrier crops work on farms. The evidence is one research-station trial.

Not shown: What climate does to the disease or its mealybugs. No study was reached.

Vascular-streak dieback

A fungal disease of branches and seedlings in South-East Asia and Melanesia. Cacao met it there; it is not known from cacao's native range.

Origin: a new-encounter disease. The fungus was identified as the cause in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s and its original wild host is unknown. (Guest and Keane 2007)
Distribution on cacao: throughout South-East Asia and parts of Melanesia, with New Britain the eastern natural limit, a later appearance in New Ireland attributed to a breach of quarantine, and no records from Africa. (Guest and Keane 2007; source 1)
A complication: the plant-protection database, updated on 8 September 2026, now lists the same fungus in Brazil, French Guiana and Suriname. Those records are on cassava, not cacao, first recorded from 2023. (source 10; source 11)
Spread is short-range: spores live a few hours and very few infections occur more than 80 m from a diseased tree. Transmission through seed has not been demonstrated. (Guest and Keane 2007; Prior 1985)
Loss: in one young planting every seedling was infected and 55% were dead within 33 months. Infection followed rainfall. (Keane 1981)
Resistance is strongly inherited, with heritability of 0.67 to 0.92 among Sulawesi clones, and rarely came together with good yield and bean quality. (McMahon et al. 2018)
Quarantine: six months in screened houses was enough to detect it in planting material. (Prior 1985)

Not shown: Whether the fungus on cassava in South America can infect cacao there. Nothing read addresses it.

Not shown: Yield loss in mature cocoa. The measured losses are in seedlings.

Cocoa pod borer

A small moth, Conopomorpha cramerella, whose larvae tunnel inside the pod. An Asian and Pacific pest.

Distribution, as the plant-protection database had it on 3 June 2025: Brunei, Indonesia (widespread), Malaysia (restricted), the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and Samoa. Australia is recorded as absent after eradication. (source 12)
Spread: Sulawesi in the 1860s, the Philippines in 1936, Malaysia in 1980, Papua New Guinea in 2006. (source 1)
The one eradication on record: found in a single Queensland plantation of 2,400 trees in 2011, and declared eradicated on 14 January 2014. (source 13; source 14)
Quarantine: on Brazil's list of absent quarantine pests and on the lists of four regional plant protection bodies. It has not been recorded in Africa or the Americas. (source 15; source 12)
Measuring it: grading damage on a four-point scale predicted yield loss better than counting infested pods. (Vazú et al. 2014)
Management: a synthetic sex pheromone attracted males for 27 weeks, which measures moths caught and not crop saved. Controlling a minor mirid pest can backfire, because egg-laying borers avoid pods the mirid has damaged. (Niogret et al. 2022; Wielgoss et al. 2012)
Bagging pods, the method most often recommended: no trial was reached.

Not shown: A loss figure for any country.

Not shown: That pheromone traps protect a crop.

Mirids and capsids

Sap-sucking bugs: Sahlbergella singularis and Distantiella theobroma in West and Central Africa, and Helopeltis in Asia.

Distribution: the plant-protection database lists Sahlbergella singularis from 12 African countries, from Sierra Leone to Uganda and Angola. The table carries no usable date. (source 16)
Damage, in Asia: a Helopeltis mosquito bug reduced yield mainly by killing the youngest fruit, which dropped after a single feeding wound. Full-sized pods were unaffected by heavy scarring. (Muhamad and Way 1995)
Management: populations and pod damage were lower in Cameroonian plantations with pheromone traps. A mass-trapping trial in Ghana found too little damage in any plot to tell whether trapping protected the crop. (Mahot et al. 2024; Sarfo et al. 2018)
Climate: of the weather variables recorded in Cameroon, only relative humidity was related to damage. (Mahot et al. 2024)

Not shown: Yield loss from African mirids. Neither African study measured it.

Not shown: The present range of any mirid species.

Ceratocystis wilt

A fungal wilt of the trunk and branches. Thinly covered here.

Origin: populations in Bahia, Colombia and Costa Rica show the low diversity of recent introductions, while those in Rondônia and western Ecuador look native. (Engelbrecht et al. 2007)
Resistance: the widely planted clone CCN-51 tested as susceptible, with TSH-1188 the resistant standard. (Sanches et al. 2008)

Not shown: When it arrived anywhere, how it travelled, or what it costs. Two studies are all that was read.

Keeping threats apart: quarantine

The geography above is the reason planting material is not moved freely. Swollen shoot is essentially West African, witches' broom and frosty pod rot are diseases of the Americas, and pod borer and vascular-streak dieback belong to Asia and the Pacific. Each region is free of something the others have.

The international guidelines recommend that budwood move only through an intermediate quarantine station in a country where cacao is not grown. Two operate: one at the University of Reading and one run by the United States Department of Agriculture in Miami. (source 1)
There, test plants are grafted and inspected weekly for two years for signs of virus. (source 1)
Seed is described as the safest form in which to move cacao, and shipping whole pods is not recommended. The guidelines cover small research consignments, not trade in planting material or in cocoa beans. (source 1)

Not shown: What national law requires anywhere. No cacao pest was found named in the European Union's plant health regulation as first published, and the consolidated text was not checked.

Sources

Studies are cited by author and year and summarised, with their limits, on the research pages. The official documents are listed here. Each was downloaded and read, and the passage relied on was checked to be in it.

CacaoNet / Bioversity International (Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, CGIAR). Technical Guidelines for the Safe Movement of Cacao Germplasm. Revised from the FAO/IPGRI Technical Guidelines No. 20 (Fifth Update, 2024) (2024). centaur.reading.ac.uk/119846/1/Safe%20Movement%20Guidelines%202024%20ENGLISH%20VERSION.pdf
Official guidance, not law · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Moniliophthora perniciosa (CRNPPE), world distribution (2024-07-25). gd.eppo.int/taxon/CRNPPE/distribution
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Moniliophthora perniciosa (CRNPPE), distribution details by country (2024-07-25). gd.eppo.int/taxon/CRNPPE/distribution/BR_ba
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Moniliophthora roreri (MONPRO), world distribution (2019-10-11). gd.eppo.int/taxon/MONPRO/distribution
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Moniliophthora roreri (MONPRO), distribution details by country (2019-10-11). gd.eppo.int/taxon/MONPRO/distribution/BO
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Moniliophthora roreri (MONPRO), distribution details by country (2019-10-11). gd.eppo.int/taxon/MONPRO/distribution/JM
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Moniliophthora roreri (MONPRO), categorization. gd.eppo.int/taxon/MONPRO/categorization
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Cacao swollen shoot disease (CSSV00), overview. gd.eppo.int/taxon/CSSV00
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Cacao swollen shoot disease (CSSV00), world distribution (2024-10-10). gd.eppo.int/taxon/CSSV00/distribution
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Rhizoctonia theobromae (ONCOTH), world distribution (2026-09-08). gd.eppo.int/taxon/ONCOTH/distribution
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Rhizoctonia theobromae (ONCOTH), distribution details by country (2026-09-08). gd.eppo.int/taxon/ONCOTH/distribution/BR
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Conopomorpha cramerella (AROCCR), world distribution (2025-06-03). gd.eppo.int/taxon/AROCCR/distribution
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Conopomorpha cramerella (AROCCR), distribution details by country (2025-06-03). gd.eppo.int/taxon/AROCCR/distribution/AU
Official statistics · International
International Plant Protection Convention (report submitted by Australia's NPPO). IPPC Official Pest Report AUS-47/4: Eradication of Cocoa Pod Borer from Australia (2014-01-21). www.ippc.int/en/countries/australia/pestreports/2014/01/eradication-of-cocoa-pod-borer-from-australia/
Official statistics · Australia
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Conopomorpha cramerella (AROCCR), categorization. gd.eppo.int/taxon/AROCCR/categorization
Official statistics · International
EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). EPPO Global Database: Sahlbergella singularis (SAHLSI), world distribution. gd.eppo.int/taxon/SAHLSI/distribution
Official statistics · International

Reviewed 9 October 2026.

Not reached

Lasiodiplodia dieback, stem borers and the pod-boring moth Carmenta
Pod bagging (sleeving) trials against cocoa pod borer
First records of Phytophthora megakarya outside Ghana
Brazil's own official record of frosty pod rot
Mealybugs as pests in their own right, apart from the virus they carry
Any sourced figure for the share of the world crop lost to pests and diseases