Weather swings, disease, and aging farms have hit West African cocoa, pushing prices above $11k per ton in 2024 and still elevated in 2025. Bioproduction is a practical hedge: make key cocoa ingredients geographically near consumers in food grade tanks, cutting transport risk and lead times. The chocolate industry is a key global market with recent reports averaging about $140 billion a year.
We engineer Yarrowia lipolytica to produce cocoa-like fats, scale the best strain, and turn lipids into a chocolate bar prototype. In 2025 we ran a 30 L bioreactor run, reached around 100 g/L biomass and 50 to 60% lipids, and set up downstream processing for larger extractions and shipment to chocolate manufacturers for testing. Triglyceride profiling and chocolate bar formulation are the current focus.
ValleyDAO backs Cocoa ZERO for three reasons: Prof. Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro leads world class work on Yarrowia lipolytica, the cocoa squeeze demands new production routes, and chocolate is a beloved staple worth protecting with resilient, local supply.
