Abstract
ABSTRACT Cocoa, an important global commodity, has shown declines in production due to various factors, among them the low rate of natural pollination. The combination of self‐incompatibility and a specialised floral morphology makes cocoa production completely dependent on insect pollinators. Considering the high dependence of cocoa on pollinators, its economic importance and the lack of studies exploring the global distribution of its pollinators, this study aimed to conduct a bibliographic review of research on cocoa pollination to analyse the spatial distribution of studies and pollinators, identify key pollinators, and highlight knowledge gaps. For this purpose, scientific data repositories such as Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar were utilised. Based on the data obtained, a spatial network of identified pollinators was built. To identify key pollinators in the network, degree, betweenness centrality (BC) and closeness centrality (CC) were calculated. A total of 30 articles out of 157 attended our criteria and were included in the analysis. The publication years ranged from 1950 to 2024. The countries with the highest number of studies were Ghana (20%) and Indonesia (16.6%). The network recorded a total of 39 links between 13 countries and 13 pollinators. Flies of the genus Forcipomyia were classified as key pollinators of cocoa flowers. Ants, stingless bees and aphids also have great potential to act as pollinators. The adoption of friendly agricultural practices that favour the populations of these pollinators is essential to ensure pollination services and consequently improve cocoa yield and quality.
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Claims 6
Claim · model-written summary
Ghana had the highest number of studies on cocoa pollination (20%).
- Taxon
- Cocoa
Theobroma cacaoe0 - Outcome
- number of studiese1
- Value
- 20%e1
- Setting
- Ghanae1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Cocoa, an important global commodity”
e1“The countries with the highest number of studies were Ghana (20%) and Indonesia (16.6%)”
Claim · model-written summary
Indonesia was among the countries with the highest number of cocoa pollination studies (16.6%).
- Taxon
- CocoaTheobroma cacaoe0
- Outcome
- number of studiese1
- Value
- 16.6%e1
- Setting
- Indonesiae1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Cocoa, an important global commodity”
e1“The countries with the highest number of studies were Ghana (20%) and Indonesia (16.6%)”
Claim · model-written summary
The pollinator network recorded 39 links between 13 countries and 13 pollinators.
- Taxon
- CocoaTheobroma cacaoe0
- Outcome
- linkse1
- Value
- 39 linkse1
- Qualifier
- between 13 countries and 13 pollinatorse1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Cocoa, an important global commodity”
e1“The network recorded a total of 39 links between 13 countries and 13 pollinators”
Claim · model-written summary
Flies of the genus Forcipomyia were classified as key pollinators of cocoa flowers.
- Taxon
- cocoaTheobroma cacaoe0
- Interactor
- Flies of the genus Forcipomyiae0pollinator
- Outcome
- key pollinatorse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Flies of the genus Forcipomyia were classified as key pollinators of cocoa flowers”
Claim · model-written summary
Ants and stingless bees, and possibly aphids, have great potential to act as cocoa pollinators.
- Taxon
- CocoaTheobroma cacaoe0
- Interactor
- AntsFormicidaee1pollinator
- Second interactor
- stingless beesMeliponinie1pollinator
- Outcome
- great potential to act as pollinatorse1
- Qualifier
- aphidse1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Cocoa, an important global commodity”
e1“Ants, stingless bees and aphids also have great potential to act as pollinators”
Claim · model-written summary
Adopting friendly agricultural practices that favour pollinator populations is essential to ensure pollination services and improve cocoa yield and quality.
- Taxon
- cocoaTheobroma cacaoe0
- Treatment
- adoption of friendly agricultural practicese0
- Outcome
- cocoa yield and qualitye0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The adoption of friendly agricultural practices that favour the populations of these pollinators is essential to ensure pollination services and consequently improve cocoa yield and quality”