Biocontrol of Molds Growth during Cocoa Bean (Theobroma cacao L.) Fermentation Using Native Yeast Species: Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida incommunis

Didier Kra Brou Kédjébo — 2026-10-22

Background: The overall quality of dry fermented cocoa beans is three-dimensional, including the market, aromatic, and health aspects. The molds that are present during post-harvest technological treatments up to the storage of fermented and dried cocoa beans play a harmful role by degrading the health quality of the cocoa beans. Cocoa from Ivory Coast is no exception to this problem; it is exposed to potential major risks of contamination with ochratoxin A, produced by mold.

Aims: The present study investigated the reduction of contamination of cocoa beans by mold using potentially antagonistic biological agents including antifungal yeasts such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida incommunis.

Study Design: Biocontrol of mycotoxigenic mold growth in cocoa using yeasts.

Place and Duration of Study: Food Biotechnology and Microbiology Laboratory, Food Science and Technology Research Department, Nangui ABROGOUA University, Côte d’Ivoire, between March and June 2024.

Methodology: After highlighting the antifungal properties of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida incommunis by direct and indirect confrontation techniques on Aspergillus carbonarius, A. ochraceus, and A. niger isolated from cocoa fermentation, they were inoculated into the cocoa beans before fermentation. The physicochemical parameters were measured.

Results: The main results obtained showed antagonistic effects of S. cerevisiae and C. incommunis against all the pathogenic molds A. carbonarius, A. niger, and A. ochraceus. After inoculation for fermentation, among the tested biological agents, only C. incommunis induced an increase in temperature reaching 49 °C. The titratable acidity of the inoculated cocoa beans was between 0.06 and 0.12 Eq. of NaOH.g^-1 of cocoa during fermentation. No potentially antifungal biological agent tested had any effect on the marketability of cocoa. However, only C. incommunis showed a total biocontrol effect against molds during cocoa fermentation.

Conclusion: The findings of this study could be applied to the bio-decontamination of fermented foods contaminated with pathogenic molds, and thus to reducing mycotoxin production using C. incommunis, which exhibits high fungal antagonistic potential.

Biotechnological Strategies for Improving Crop Yield and Stress Tolerance: A Critical Synthesis from Genomic Selection to Precision Engineering

Arun Kumar Kashyap — 2026-10-23

Crop improvement increasingly depends on biotechnological methods that can accelerate genetic gain while preserving yield under drought, salinity, heat, nutrient limitation and biotic stress. Yet the field is often discussed as a collection of technologies rather than as a translation problem linking target discovery, genetic intervention, plant regeneration, field validation and breeding deployment. This critical narrative review evaluates the principal biotechnology platforms used to improve crop yield and stress tolerance, with emphasis on evidence maturity, field relevance, genetic architecture and the causes of inconsistent translation. Literature published primarily from 1 January 2015 to 8 August 2026 was examined, while earlier seminal studies were retained when they established concepts or field-tested traits that remain influential. The synthesis covers genomics-assisted selection, pan-genomics and phenomics, transgenic and RNA-based engineering, CRISPR-associated genome editing, base and prime editing, synthetic and metabolic engineering, and transformation and regeneration technologies. Evidence is strongest where biotechnology is integrated with breeding and tested against agronomically meaningful outcomes across realistic environments. Genomic selection is particularly suited to polygenic traits, but prediction decays when training populations poorly represent target environments. Transgenic and genome-edited interventions have generated convincing examples of improved drought performance, salinity tolerance and disease resistance, although effect sizes are frequently context dependent. Cis-regulatory editing and allelic series offer a promising route to tune quantitative traits while reducing pleiotropic penalties, whereas base and prime editing broaden sequence precision but remain constrained by delivery, editing efficiency and crop-specific regeneration. Photosynthetic and metabolic engineering has produced notable field proof-of-concept, yet transfer from model or experimental systems to major crops remains incomplete. Across platforms, the dominant bottlenecks are genotype-dependent transformation, genotype-by-environment interaction, combined stresses, fitness trade-offs, durability of resistance, and insufficient multi-environment validation. The most defensible strategy is therefore not technological substitution but an integrated pipeline in which genomic prediction and phenotyping identify robust targets, precision engineering generates controlled allelic variation, and multi-environment breeding determines whether molecular gains become stable yield advantage.

Biotechnology Journal International

Biocontrol of Molds Growth during Cocoa Bean (Theobroma cacao L.) Fermentation Using Native Yeast Species: Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida incommunis

Biotechnological Strategies for Improving Crop Yield and Stress Tolerance: A Critical Synthesis from Genomic Selection to Precision Engineering