An Extraordinary Fruit

This article discusses the historical development of cacao experimentation in Colombia, highlighting the role of British plant pathologist Frederick J. Pound, based in Trinidad. Pound's expeditions to the Amazon basin in the late 1930s, financed by the British Empire, aimed to find disease-free cacao trees, leading to the discovery of cacao variability. His subsequent visits to Colombia in the 1940s contributed to boosting a cacao development and research program despite the challenges the Colombian cacao industry faced, including the mismatch between supply and market demands. This led to the need for imports, despite Columbia's status as a cacao-producing country. The article emphasizes the intertwined relationship between geographical locations, individuals, disciplines, and institutions in advancing agricultural knowledge. It offers a unique perspective on the complex origins of the Green Revolution while emphasizing debates over quality or quantity within the global agricultural productivist discourse. The cacao development plans discussed in this article involved local and foreign experts in driving the agrarian science around cacao, and the exchange and adaptation of their ideas led to the modernization of cacao science.