The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) is a native of Central America where it was used by Maya and Aztecs to make a bitter, but highly prized, drink. The genus name of the plant refers to food of the gods. This tree, widely grown in tropical America, produces fruit pods year around from the time it is ten years old for about 50 years. The pods are produced directly on the trunk and branches, a condition known as cauliflory. The seeds of twenty to twenty-five pods are extracted to produce two pounds of cocoa, the raw material of chocolate. Cacao also produces products used in the manufacture of cosmetics and medicine. In recent years a fungal disease, Witches Broom (Crinipellis perniciosa), invaded cacoa plantations. Crinipellis perniciosa, a basidiomycete that produces small pink mushroom fruiting bodies. The fungus redirects nutrients from the pods towards a new “nutrient sink,” the brooms where the fungal growth is concentrated, producing shriveled pods. The fungus was first observed in 1895 in Surinam and rediscovered many years later (1989) in Bahia, Brazil. Crinipellis perniciosa has been introduced widely throughout cacoa-growing regions of the Western Hemisphere. The disease spread from Brazil into southern Panama, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Columbia, and parts of the Caribbean islands. In only four years after its discovery in the New World in 1989, Crinipellis perniciosa resulted in a 60% decrease in cacao production in Brazil, a loss of $235 million. 
Methods to protect the cacao tree from the disease include chemical control and sanitation. One other control measure being investigated is the use of a fungus to kill a fungus. In an international effort to control Witches Broom the fungal parasite, Trichoderma stromaticum, is being developed  as a control agent. --V. C. Berrigan