The annual International Conference on the Status of Plant and Animal Genome Research, which this year was held January 10-14 in San Diego, initiated a Cacao Genome Sequencing Workshop session which took place January 11.

The conference was organized by David Kuhn of the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS).

Presenters included Dr. Howard Shapiro, the global director of plant science and external research for Mars, Inc., whose talk was titled “The Role of Public-Private Collaboration in Sequencing the Cacao Genome,” and Dr. Raymond Schnell of the U...