September 16, 2024
Nine Penn State researchers have been named fellows of the Institute of Energy and the Environment for 2024. The program recognizes and assists the exceptional achievements and unparalleled research impacts of highly successful researchers in the areas of energy and the environment. Nominees for the fellowship were submitted by the University community.
June 26, 2024
Cacao, the chocolate tree, is one of the world’s most important economic crops, generating hundreds of billions of dollars annually. However, cocoa is affected by a range of pests and diseases, with some estimates putting losses as high as 30% to 40% of global production. Now, a team led by researchers at Penn State has created a genetic information resource to help plant breeders develop resistant strains of cacao that can be grown sustainably in its native Amazon and elsewhere, such as the tropical latitudes of Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.
June 7, 2024
A collaborative effort between Penn State University and the Belize Foundation for Research and Environmental Education (BFREE) inspired a successful workshop that charted future interdisciplinary activities on developing agroforestry systems for sustainable and climate-resilient solutions and ecosystem conservation in Latin America.
October 16, 2023
Three projects have been awarded seed grants as part of the Penn State-Belize Foundation for Research and Environmental Education initiative. Faculty and students from Penn State will research agricultural and ecological sustainability, preservation of tropical rainforest ecosystems, and sustainable development in Belize.
October 2, 2023
Cadmium (Cd) is a heavy metal that poses a threat to food safety via the ingestion of food products with Cd. The uptake of Cd by the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) has gained attention after the European Union set limits for Cd in chocolate products, the main commodity produced from cacao beans. In this study, we analyzed levels of Cd in soils and plant tissues across five cacao farms in the Piura region of Peru to identify the origins of Cd accumulation, and the natural and human factors controlling its concentration
October 2, 2023
Identifying the effectiveness of agricultural interventions is a challenge faced by many international aid initiatives. This article reports on our efforts to document the success of agricultural aid interventions.
August 26, 2021
An exhaustive and painstaking comparison of the genomes of multiple strains of the cacao tree by a team of researchers has provided insights into the role genomic structural variants play in the regulation of gene expression and chromosome evolution, giving rise to the differences within populations of the plant.
May 20, 2021
April 13, 2021
Penn State Global Programs has announced the 2020-21 recipients of its annual awards that recognize the outstanding contributions of individuals and academic programs at Penn State who have helped to advance the University’s global engagement goals.
January 6, 2021
The CARICOM Biofortification Network being spearheaded by IICA is undertaking trials of iron enriched beans in Belize and zinc biofortified rice in Guyana.
December 23, 2020
May 15, 2020
Penn State has committed $530,000 of new support for three of the CfP graduates to continue with their PhD studies.
May 6, 2020
Our lab remains open under tightly controlled safety conditions. We are also focused on writing manuscripts, a thesis, and thesis proposal and several grant proposals. Overall our progress is continuing at an efficient pace given the circumstances. Our weekly lab meetings continue, in this photo, we celebrate Sarah Prewitt last week, as she moves into a new position at USDA APHIS!
December 6, 2019
August 29, 2019
April 1, 2019
W. LaMarr Kopp International Faculty Awards Selection Committee has selected Mark Guiltinan and Siela Maximova, as a team, for the 2019 award in recognition of their contributions to the advancement of the university’s international mission. The team will be honored at the University Faculty and Staff Awards ceremony on Tuesday, April 2nd at the Nittany Lion Inn Alumni Ballroom, beginning at noon. https://news.psu.edu/story/564797/2019/04/02/academics/guiltinan-maximova-receive-2019-kopp-international-achievement
March 27, 2019
March 26, 2019 UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Mark Guiltinan, J. Franklin Styer Professor of Horticultural Botany in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, is the recipient of the 2018 Alex and Jessie C. Black Award for Excellence in Research.
March 21, 2019
With support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture - Foreign Agricultural Service, the Cacao and Chocolate Research Network (CCRN) at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) is pleased to announce the 2020 Visiting Scientist Program. The program will support visiting scientists to work with Penn State faculty and international collaborators to advance research that is critical to the development of the fine flavor cacao/chocolate industry in Latin America and the Caribbean. These visiting scientists will spend six months at Penn State. Currently, the program is only accepting applications for economics research of the fine flavor cacao market. Exchanges will take place within the January-December 2020 timeframe, with exact dates to be determined jointly by the visiting scientist and his/her Penn State faculty mentor.
February 14, 2019
January 25, 2019
November 30, 2018
September 26, 2018
Mark Guiltinan, professor of plant molecular biology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, recently was named the J. Franklin Styer Professor of Horticultural Botany.
September 13, 2018
Congratulations to all authors and contributors! Transcriptomic analyses of cacao cell suspensions in light and dark provide target genes for controlled flavonoid production Adriana M. Gallego, Luisa F. Rojas, Oriana Parra, Héctor A. Rodriguez, Juan C. Mazo Rivas, Aura Inés Urrea, Lucía Atehortúa, Andrew S. Fister, Mark J. Guiltinan, Siela N. Maximova & Natalia Pabón-Mora Scientific Reports Volume 8, Article number: 13575 (2018)
September 2, 2018
With support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture - Foreign Agricultural Service, the Cacao and Chocolate Research Network (CCRN) at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) is pleased to announce the 2019-2020 Visiting Scientist Program. The program will support five visiting scientists to work with Penn State faculty and international collaborators to advance research that is critical to the development of the fine flavor cacao/chocolate industry in Latin America and the Caribbean. These visiting scientists will spend six months at Penn State or at a partner institution working on one of the following topic areas: advanced sensory evaluation, the fine flavor cacao market, or issues related to cadmium accumulation in cacao. Exchanges will take place within the January 2019 to May 2020 timeframe, with exact dates to be determined jointly by the visiting scientist and his/her Penn State faculty mentor.
July 3, 2018
May 11, 2018
Use of the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 could help to breed cacao trees that exhibit desirable traits such as enhanced resistance to diseases, according to plant scientists. The cacao tree, which grows in tropical regions, produces the cocoa beans that are the raw material of chocolate. Reliable productivity from cacao plants is essential to the multibillion-dollar chocolate industry, the economies of producing countries and the livelihoods of millions of smallholder cacao farmers. But each year, several plant diseases severely limit global production, with 20-30 percent of cocoa pods destroyed preharvest. CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. It is a way to modify an organism's genome by precisely delivering a DNA-cutting enzyme, Cas9, to a targeted region of DNA. The resulting change can delete or replace specific DNA pieces, thereby promoting or disabling certain traits. Previous work in cacao identified a gene, known as TcNPR3, that suppresses the plant's disease response. The researchers hypothesized that using CRISPR-Cas9 to knock out this gene would result in enhanced disease resistance. The ultimate goals of the cacao research are to help raise the standard of living for smallholder growers and stabilize a threatened cocoa supply by developing plants that can withstand diseases, climate change and other challenges.
February 8, 2018
Increasingly, chocolate-makers turn to science Researchers are studying chocolate to boost its health benefits and produce more of this tasty treat
August 23, 2017
March 23, 2017
February 24, 2017
Imagine working with cocoa all day, but never knowing the taste of chocolate. Lecturer Kristy Leissle says that’s the case for many farmers in Ghana, the number two producer of cocoa in the world, where high temperatures stymie the market. A new discovery by biologist Mark Guiltinan and his lab could change things, though, making chocolate less fickle and bringing it to millions - or billions - more people.
