Resistance of cocoa to vascular-streak dieback disease

Water-soluble exudates from young cocoa leaves markedly inhibited germination of spores of Oncobasidium theobromae in vitro, but there was no correlation between the inhibitory activity of a clone and its field resistance to vascular-streak dieback. Germinating spores penetrated young leaves and the path of penetration was marked by the browning of adjacent epidermal and mesophyll cells. At the appearance of the earliest leaf symptoms the infections in the stem were confined to the vascular traces of that leaf, but spread subsequently into the secondary xylem. Clones varied in their ability to produce tyloses in response to wounding or infection and a ranking of 10 clones on tylose frequency correlated significantly with the ranking based on field resistance, but the variability was too great for this to be useful in resistance prediction. There was no significant difference in vessel size between resistant and susceptible clones. A highly significant correlation existed between vessel and branch cross-sectional areas in six clones.