It is the thesis of this study, that the colonial and post-colonial state in Ghana used research results in agronomy, mycology, entomology and the earth sciences to protect the country's cacao economy from plant pathogens. Without such initiatives, the world's largest cacao plantations which evolved in Ghana would have floundered when the Swollen Shoot plant virus epidemic unleashed its destructive force in the mid-1930s and beyond. This thesis has challenged the widely held misconception that Ghana's cacao plantation system developed without technical support from the state. This latter view is held to be simplistic and altogether untenable.