For researchers, journalists, and educators

How to use this data

Open Cacao Index is an independent, non-commercial open-data archive of 124 cacao origins across 47 producing countries, with explicit provenance status and source citations on every record.

License — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Use freely for research, journalism, and education. Attribution required (see "How to cite" below). Derivative works must use the same licence. See full licence terms.

How to cite

Academic (recommended)

Open Cacao Index contributors (2026). Open Cacao Index (Version 0.10.0) [Dataset]. https://kakao.io

BibTeX

@dataset{open_cacao_index_2026, author = {{Open Cacao Index contributors}}, title = {Open Cacao Index}, year = {2026}, version = {0.10.0}, publisher = {Open Cacao Index}, url = {https://kakao.io}}

Journalism / informal

Open Cacao Index, kakao.io

Download

Data schema

Each origin record has a stable id, plus name, country, genetic_groups, traditional_class, and optional coordinates, elevation_m, harvest_season, fermentation, drying, flavor_profile, summary, certifications, status, sources, updated_at. See the JSON Schema for the canonical definition.

Example — count by genetic cluster (shell + jq)

curl -s https://kakao.io/data/cacao-origins.json | jq '.origins | map(.genetic_groups[]) | group_by(.) | map({(.[0]): length}) | add'

Example — Python

import json, urllib.request
data = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen("https://kakao.io/data/cacao-origins.json"))
for o in data["origins"]:
    if "Nacional" in o.get("genetic_groups", []):
        print(o["id"], o["name"], o["country"])

Provenance status

Records carry a status: draft (unverified), reviewed (corroborated against cited sources), verified (cross-checked against primary sources — reserved). Conservative genetic assignments (admixture / unknown) are preferred over confident guesses. Approximate coordinates carry coordinates.approx: true.

Commercial use

Republishing in paid products or commercial integration requires a separate licence.

Errors and contributions

Corrections welcome. Submit the origin ID, the correction, and a citation.