Arturo Gómez-Pompa Professor of Ecology and Botany in the Faculty of Sciences of the National University in the Institute of Biology at UNAM. These distinctive and academic positions have gained Gómez-Pompa a prestigious reputation in the ecological world. He discovered the use of Theobroma cacao, or the tree of chocolate, as ancient crops in rejolladas and cenotes within the Yucatán Peninsula. This confirmed his hypothesis on the anthropogenic origins of the Mayan forests and advanced future research in the domestication of tropical trees. Gómez-Pompa created a database for the Flora of Veracruz project in the 1960s that is still utilized to this
Cacao necrosis virus translucent veinal necrosis of leaves, necrotic or chlorotic spots of leaves, defoliation, and dieback of shoots that rarely leads to seedling death if infected by the Ghanaian isolate. A following recovery phase of live plants shows limited leaf symptoms. The virus has been transmitted to numerous diagnostically susceptible host species including "Beta vulgaris", "Chenopodium amaranticolor", "Chenopodium quinoa", "Cucumis sativus", "Glycine max", "Gomphrena globosa", "Nicotiana clevelandii", "Nicotiana glutinosa", "Nicotiana tabacum", "Petunia × hybrida", "Phaseolus vulgaris", "Tetragonia tetragonioides", "Theobroma cacao", and "Vigna unguiculata", but these plants are not infected in nature. The strain used to infect these species was the Ghanian isolate.