• Ecuador •
• Natural ingredients • Native cocoa "arriba" •

The world cocoa market distinguishes between two broad categories of cocoa beans: "fine or flavour" cocoa beans, and "bulk" or "ordinary" cocoa beans. Ecuador, the world's largest supplier of fine or flavour cocoa (producing around 60 to 70 thousand tonnes per annum), accounts for over half the total world production of fine or flavour cocoa.

Flavour beans produced in Ecuador are known as “Nacional”, unique in the world. Botanically, it belongs to the “Forastero” variety, which comes from the humid Ecuadorian forest. “Nacional” has a singular characteristic that makes it different compared to the other varieties of flavour beans, which is its strong floral flavour, known as “Arriba”.

With support from BTFP, the  BioTrade Programme in Ecuador in joint collaboration with Ecociencia  is supporting  the value chain of Native Cocoa Arriba. Spite the importance of “arriba flavour “cocoa on Ecuador’s culture and biodiversity, its low yields have discouraged producers in the country who are changing crops to high yielding varieties or other monocultures, eroding the sources of the unique cocoa that produces the best chocolates in the world. Also impacting biodiversity as normally under the ”arriba flavour” production practices, native biodiversity is enhanced. Per se, this cocoa has as its characteristics an intrinsic value added in its flavour, but when combining with Organic and/or Fair Trade and/or RFA´s Bird-friendly certifications, as well as other practices such as management guidelines, it contributes to fulfil the Biotrade objectives of the social, environmental and economic criteria.

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For sector assessment and strategy, click here

For more information, please visit: Cocoa Arriba of Ecuador [in Spanish].