UC Davis Joins Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Coffee and Cacao

The University of California, Davis will join other universities, trade groups and a leading global food company in a university-led collaborative agricultural research program that leverages the advanced capacities of American institutions to meet global challenges in coffee and cacao research.

UC Davis is a subrecipient of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Coffee and Cacao (CCIL), a multi-year cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of State awarded to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Clemson University in South Carolina serves as co-lead.

The UC Davis subaward includes research led by both the UC Davis Coffee Center and the Mars Plant Science Center in collaboration with the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis.

“As an integral part of the UH Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Coffee and Cacao, the UC Davis Coffee Center will integrate advanced postharvest engineering, chemical profiling and expert sensory evaluation to identify practices that strengthen coffee production and processing,” said Irwin R. Donis-González, project lead and principal investigator at UC Davis, associate professor of cooperative extension in postharvest engineering in Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and co-director of the UC Davis Coffee Center.

“In partnership with coffee producers and stakeholders in Hawaiʻi, the continental U.S. and abroad, UC Davis will refine methodologies, deliver actionable data, train producers and share findings — empowering informed decisions, elevating coffee quality and advancing sustainability across the supply chain," he said.

Through the Mars Plant Science Center in Davis, a suite of field-ready cacao tools — the product of two decades of research and development — will be deployed to smallholder cooperatives and commercially viable producer groups in key cacao-growing regions. In a collaboration led by Amanda Crump, associate professor of teaching in international agriculture development, UC Davis will help to monitor adoption of perceived benefits, including household resilience in cacao farming communities.

The toolkit includes a rapid disease-detection kit, an AI-powered diagnosis app, biodegradable anti-pest pod sleeves, a public genetic marker database and a multilingual training platform for field technicians.

Ashley DuVal, senior scientist at Mars, said: “The Innovation Lab provides a powerful new means to help create tangible impact for cacao farmers in the U.S. as well as in cacao-growing regions around the world. We look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with this network to make available new tools, technologies and highly productive and resilient planting materials to farmers and scale the positive impact of the work done through our Cocoa for Generations strategy.”

The CCIL will work with small farmers in Hawaiʻi, the continental United States, and in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The cooperative effort will work to breed varieties to withstand diseases and drought, improve farm management and post-harvest processing, as well as build lasting research capacity in partner countries and produce the economic evidence countries need to guide their own investments in research.

Coffee is enjoyed by two-thirds of American adults every day, supports more than 2.2 million U.S. jobs, and adds more than $343 billion to the U.S. economy every year. The typical U.S. resident eats up to eight pounds of chocolate a year, and chocolate generates $28.4 billion in sales and adds 700,000 jobs to the U.S. economy.

More than 99% of America’s coffee and cacao supply is imported. Protecting the health and productivity of these crops abroad and in Hawaiʻi secures American businesses, consumers and growers.

Yet the American roasting and confectionery industry depends almost entirely on a stable, high-quality supply from producing countries abroad. A more resilient global supply, enabled by CCIL research, will strengthen U.S. security, economic and trade interests while reinforcing America’s leadership in coffee and cacao leadership and production.

CCIL features a world-class consortium of partners, including Michigan State University; The Ohio State University; the Pennsylvania State University; Coffee Quality Institute; Mars, Incorporated; PlantVillage+; Synergistic Hawaiʻi Agriculture Council; and World Coffee Research.