Nobody expected the Azuero peninsula, Panama’s driest and most deforested corner, to hold the country’s rarest cacao. But in the hills of Las Minas, Herrera, backyard trees have been grown from seed for generations, isolated enough to keep old bloodlines. The 2026 Ferro-Lozano study sampled trees in Herrera and found them mainly linked to Criollo and Amelonado; at one farm five trees showed more than 99 percent Criollo ancestry, something researchers called rare anywhere in the world. Criollo is the delicate, low-pigment, aromatic group that most of the world lost to disease and productivity. Growers here, many of them also stingless-bee keepers, are now trying to multiply the best trees by seed from isolated mother trees and by grafting, mostly on their own.
What to know
- Five trees with more than 99% Criollo ancestry were documented at a single Herrera farm.
- Criollo is self-compatible: an isolated tree can fruit and keep its purity, which is how it survived here.
- Large, sweet, pale beans and strongly marked flavours are reported from the best Las Minas trees.
- Growers say they need genetic and sensory testing to know which hybrids to multiply, and are asking for support.
Visiting
This is not a tourist cacao region. Chitré is the base; Las Minas is an hour into the hills. Go in the dry season, ask locally, and buy honey from the stingless-bee keepers while you are there.
- Cacao Las Minas workshop, Las Minas, Herrera (1 h from Chitré). Chocolate-making workshops at the shop of the family company that buys pods from 40-plus growers in Criollo country. Combine with the El Montuoso reserve, petroglyphs and waterfalls.
Sources: Ferro-Lozano et al., Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution (2026) · Newsroom Panama, Panama’s cacao rush (2026)